CASE 
=8= 


tlje  H>ame  Sltttfjor 


THE  SACRED   FOUNT. 

$1.50. 

THE    WINGS    OF   THE 
DOVE.     2  vols.     $2.50. 


THE   BETTER   SORT 


THE   BETTER  SORT 


BY 

HENRY    JAMES 


NEW    YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
1903 


COPYRIGHT,  1903,  BY 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published,  February,  1903 


->  *C    II 

£48- 
:63 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

BROKEN  WINGS i 

THE  BELDONALD  HOLBEIN 24 

THE  Two  FACES 50 

THE  TONE  OF  TIME 68 

THE  SPECIAL  TYPE     .  93 

MRS.  MEDWIN .  116 

FLICKERBRIDGE   .........   143 

THE  STORY  IN  IT        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .168 

THE  BEAST  IN  THE  JUNGLE       .  ...   189 

THE  BIRTHPLACE 245 

THE  PAPERS 312 


A  rr 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

BROKEN   WINGS 


/CONSCIOUS  as  he  was  of  what  was  between 
V^  them,  though  perhaps  less  conscious  than  ever 
of  why  there  should  at  that  time  of  day  be  anything, 
he  would  yet  scarce  have  supposed  they  could  be  so 
long  in  a  house  together  without  some  word  or  some 
look.  It  had  been  since  the  Saturday  afternoon,  and 
that  made  twenty-four  hours.  The  party — five-and- 
thirty  people,  and  some  of  them  great — was  one  in 
which  words  and  looks  might  more  or  less  have  gone 
astray.  The  effect,  none  the  less,  he  judged,  would 
have  been,  for  her  quite  as  for  himself,  that  no  sound 
and  no  sign  from  the  other  had  been  picked  up  by 
either.  They  had  happened,  both  at  dinner  and  at 
luncheon,  to  be  so  placed  as  not  to  have  to  glare — or 
to  grin — across;  and  for  the  rest  they  could  each,  in 
such  a  crowd,  as  freely  help  the  general  ease  to  keep 
them  apart  as  assist  it  to  bring  them  together.  One 
chance  there  was,  of  course,  that  might  be  beyond  their 
control.  He  had  been  the  night  before  half  surprised 
at  not  finding  her  his  "  fate  "  when  the  long  procession 
to  the  dining-room  solemnly  hooked  itself  together. 
He  would  have  said  in  advance — recognising  it  as  one 
of  the  sharp  "  notes  "  of  Mundham — that,  should  the 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

gathering  contain  a  literary  lady,  the  literary  lady 
would,  for  congruity,  be  apportioned  to  the  arm,  when 
there  was  a  question  of  arms,  of  the  gentleman  present 
who  represented  the  nearest  thing  to  literature.  Poor 
Straith  represented  "  art/'  and  that,  no  doubt,  would 
have  been  near  enough  had  not  the  party  offered  for 
choice  a  slight  excess  of  men.  The  representative  of 
art  had  been  of  the  two  or  three  who  went  in  alone, 
whereas  Mrs.  Harvey  had  gone  in  with  one  of  the  rep 
resentatives  of  banking. 

It  was  certain,  however,  that  she  would  not  again 
be  consigned  to  Lord  Belgrove,  and  it  was  just  possible 
that  he  himself  should  not  be  again  alone.  She  would 
be,  on  the  whole,  the  most  probable  remedy  to  that 
state,  on  his  part,  of  disgrace;  and  this  precisely  was 
the  great  interest  of  their  situation — they  were  the  only 
persons  present  without  some  advantage  over  some 
body  else.  They  hadn't  a  single  advantage;  they 
could  be  named  for  nothing  but  their  cleverness;  they 
were  at  the  bottom  of  the  social  ladder.  The  social 
ladder,  even  at  Mundham,  had — as  they  might  properly 
have  been  told,  as  indeed  practically  they  were  told — 
to  end  somewhere ;  which  is  no  more  than  to  say  that, 
as  he  strolled  about  and  thought  of  many  things,  Stuart 
Straith  had,  after  all,  a  good  deal  the  sense  of  helping 
to  hold  it  up.  Another  of  the  things  he  thought  of  was 
the  special  oddity — for  it  was  nothing  else — of  his 
being  there  at  all,  and  being  there  in  particular  so  out 
of  his  order  and  his  turn.  He  couldn't  answer  for  Mrs. 
Harvey's  turn.  It  might  well  be  that  she  was  in  hers ; 
but  these  Saturday-to-Monday  occasions  had  hitherto 
mostly  struck  him  as  great  gilded  cages  as  to  which 
care  was  taken  that  the  birds  should  be  birds  of  a 
feather. 

There  had  been  a  wonderful  walk  in  the  afternoon, 
within  the  limits  of  the  place,  to  a  far-away  tea-house ; 
and,  in  spite  of  the  combinations  and  changes  of  this 

2 


BROKEN   WINGS 

episode,  he  had  still  escaped  the  necessity  of  putting 
either  his  old  friend  or  himself  to  the  test.  Also  it  had 
been  all,  he  flattered  himself,  without  the  pusillanimity 
of  his  avoiding  her.  Life  was,  indeed,  well  understood 
in  these  great  conditions ;  the  conditions  constituted  in 
their  greatness  a  kind  of  fundamental  facility,  provided 
a  general  exemption,  bathed  the  hour,  whatever  it  was, 
in  a  universal  blandness,  that  were  all  a  happy  solvent 
for  awkward  relations.  It  was  beautiful,  for  instance, 
that  if  their  failure  to  meet  amid  so  much  meeting  had 
been  of  Mrs.  Harvey's  own  contrivance  he  couldn't  be 
in  the  least  vulgarly  sure  of  it.  There  were  places  in 
which  he  would  have  had  no  doubt,  places  different 
enough  from  Mundham.  He  felt  all  the  same  and 
without  anguish  that  these  were  much  more  his  places 
— even  if  she  didn't  feel  that  they  were  much  more  hers. 
The  day  had  been  warm  and  splendid,  and  this  moment 
of  its  wane — with  dinner  in  sight,  but  as  across  a  field 
of  polished  pink  marble  which  seemed  to  say  that 
wherever  in  such  a  house  there  was  space  there  was 
also,  benignantly,  time — formed,  of  the  whole  proces 
sion  of  the  hours,  the  one  dearest  to  our  friend,  whQ 
on  such  occasions  interposed  it,  whenever  he  could, 
between  the  set  of  impressions  that  ended  and  the  set 
that  began  with  "  dressing."  The  great  terraces  and 
gardens  were  almost  void;  people  had  scattered, 
though  not  altogether  even  yet  to  dress.  The  air  of 
the  place,  with  the  immense  house  all  seated  aloft  in 
strength,  robed  with  summer  and  crowned  with  suc 
cess,  was  such  as  to  contribute  something  of  its  own 
to  the  poetry  of  early  evening.  This  visitor,  at  any 
rate,  saw  and  felt  it  all  through  one  of  those  fine  hazes 
of  August  that  remind  you — at  least,  they  reminded 
him — of  the  artful  gauze  stretched  across  the  stage  of 
a  theatre  when  an  effect  of  mystery  or  some  particular 
pantomimic  ravishment  is  desired. 

Should  he,  in  fact,  have  to  pair  with  Mrs.  Harvey 

3 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

for  dinner  it  would  be  a  shame  to  him  not  to  have  ad 
dressed  her  sooner;  and  should  she,  on  the  contrary, 
be  put  with  someone  else  the  loss  of  so  much  of  the 
time  would  have  but  the  greater  ugliness.  Didn't  he 
meanwhile  make  out  that  were  ladies  in  the  lower  gar 
den,  from  which  the  sound  of  voices,  faint,  but,  as  al 
ways  in  the  upper  air  of  Mundham,  exceedingly  sweet, 
was  just  now  borne  to  him?  She  might  be  among 
them,  and  if  he  should  find  her  he  would  let  her  know 
he  had  sought  her.  He  would  treat  it  frankly  as  an 
occasion  for  declaring  that  what  had  happened  between 
them — or  rather  what  had  not  happened — was  too  ab 
surd.  What  at  present  occurred,  however,  was  that  in 
his  quest  of  her  he  suddenly,  at  the  turn  of  an  alley, 
perceived  her,  not  far  off,  seated  in  a  sort  of  bower  with 
the  Ambassador.  With  this  he  pulled  up,  going  an 
other  way  and  pretending  not  to  see  them.  Three 
times  already  that  afternoon  he  had  observed  her  in 
different  situations  with  the  Ambassador.  He  was 
the  more  struck  accordingly  when,  upward  of  an  hour 
later,  again  alone  and  with  his  state  unremedied,  he 
saw  her  placed  for  dinner  next  his  Excellency.  It  was 
not  at  all  what  would  have  been  at  Mundham  her  right 
seat,  so  that  it  could  only  be  explained  by  his  Excel 
lency's  direct  request.  She  was  a  success !  This  time 
Straith  was  well  in  her  view  and  could  see  that  in  the 
candle-light  of  the  wonderful  room,  where  the  lustres 
were,  like  the  table,  all  crystal  and  silver,  she  was  as 
handsome  as  anyone,  taking  the  women  of  her  age,  and 
also  as  "  smart "  as  the  evening  before,  and  as  true  as 
any  of  the  others  to  the  law  of  a  marked  difference  in 
her  smartness.  If  the  beautiful  way  she  held  herself 
— for  decidedly  it  was  beautiful — came  in  a  great  meas 
ure  from  the  good  thing  she  professionally  made  of  it 
all,  our  observer  could  reflect  that  the  poor  thing  he 
professionally  made  of  it  probably  affected  his  attitude 
in  just  the  opposite  way;  but  they  communicated 

4 


BROKEN   WINGS 

neither  in  the  glare  nor  in  the  grin  that  he  had  dreaded. 
Still,  their  eyes  did  now  meet,  and  then  it  seemed  to 
him  that  her  own  were  strange. 

II 

SHE,  on  her  side,  had  her  private  consciousness,  and 
quite  as  full  a  one,  doubtless,  as  he,  but  with  the  ad 
vantage  that,  when  the  company  separated  for  the 
night,  she  was  not,  like  her  friend,  reduced  to  a  vigil 
unalloyed.  Lady  Claude,  at  the  top  of  the  stairs,  had 
said,  "  May  I  look  in — in  five  minutes — if  you  don't 
mind?  "  and  then  had  arrived  in  due  course  and  in  a 
wonderful  new  beribboned  gown,  the  thing  just 
launched  for  such  occasions.  Lady  Claude  was  young 
and  earnest  and  delightfully  bewildered  and  bewilder 
ing,  and  however  interesting  she  might,  through  cer 
tain  elements  in  her  situation,  have  seemed  to  a  literary 
lady,  her  own  admirations  and  curiosities  were  such  as 
from  the  first  promised  to  rule  the  hour.  She  had  al 
ready  expressed  to  Mrs.  Harvey  a  really  informed  en 
thusiasm.  She  not  only  delighted  in  her  numerous 
books,  which  was  a  tribute  the  author  had  not  infre 
quently  met,  but  she  even  appeared  to  have  read  them — 
an  appearance  with  which  her  interlocutress  was  much 
less  acquainted.  The  great  thing  was  that  she  also 
yearned  to  write,  and  that  she  had  turned  up  in  her 
fresh  furbelows  not  only  to  reveal  this  secret  and  to 
ask  for  direction  and  comfort,  but  literally  to  make  a 
stranger  confidence,  for  which  the  mystery  of  midnight 
seemed  propitious.  Midnight  was,  indeed,  as  the  sit 
uation  developed,  well  over  before  her  confidence  was 
spent,  for  it  had  ended  by  gathering  such  a  current  as 
floated  forth,  with  everything  in  Lady  Claude's  own 
life,  many  things  more  in  that  of  her  adviser.  Mrs. 
Harvey  was,  at  all  events,  amused,  touched,  and  effect 
ually  kept  awake ;  and  at  the  end  of  half  an  hour  they 

5 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

had  quite  got  what  might  have  been  called  their  second 
wind  of  frankness  and  were  using  it  for  a  discussion 
of  the  people  in  the  house.  Their  primary  communion 
had  been  simply  on  the  question  of  the  pecuniary  profits 
of  literature  as  the  producer  of  so  many  admired  vol 
umes  was  prepared  to  present  them  to  an  aspirant. 
Lady  Claude  was  in  financial  difficulties  and  desired 
the  literary  issue.  This  was  the  breathless  revelation 
she  had  rustled  over  a  mile  of  crimson  velvet  corridor 
to  make. 

"  Nothing  ?  "  she  had  three  minutes  later  incredu 
lously  gasped.  "  I  can  make  nothing  at  all  ?  "  But 
the  gasp  was  slight  compared  with  the  stupefaction 
produced  in  her  by  a  brief  further  parley,  in  the  course 
of  which  Mrs.  Harvey  had,  after  a  hesitation,  taken 
her  own  plunge.  "  You  make  so  little — wonderful 
you!  "  And  then,  as  the  producer  of  the  admired  vol 
umes  simply  sat  there  in  her  dressing-gown,  with  the 
saddest  of  slow  head-shakes,  looking  suddenly  too  wan 
even  to  care  that  it  was  at  last  all  out :  "  What,  in  that 
case,  is  the  use  of  success  and  celebrity  and  genius? 
You  have  no  success  ?  "  She  had  looked  almost  awe 
struck  at  this  further  confession  of  her  friend.  They 
were  face  to  face  in  a  poor  human  crudity,  which  trans 
formed  itself  quickly  into  an  effusive  embrace. 
"  You've  had  it  and  lost  it  ?  Then  when  it  has  been 
as  great  as  yours  one  can  lose  it?  " 

"  More  easily  than  one  can  get  it." 

Lady  Claude  continued  to  marvel.  "  But  you  do 
so  much — and  it's  so  beautiful !  "  On  which  Mrs.  Har 
vey  simply  smiled  again  in  her  handsome  despair,  and 
after  a  moment  found  herself  again  in  the  arms  of  her 
visitor.  The  younger  woman  had  remained  for  a  little 
a  good  deal  arrested  and  hushed,  and  had,  at  any  rate, 
sensitive  and  charming,  immediately  dropped,  in  the 
presence  of  this  almost  august  unveiling,  the  question 
of  her  own  thin  troubles.  But  there  are  short  cuts  at 

6 


BROKEN    WINGS 

that  hour  of  night  that  morning  scarce  knows,  and  it 
took  but  little  more  of  the  breath  of  the  real  to  suggest 
to  Lady  Claude  more  questions  in  such  a  connection 
than  she  could  answer  for  herself.  "  How,  then,  if  you 
haven't  private  means,  do  you  get  on  ?  " 

"Ah!     I  don't  get  on." 

Lady  Claude  looked  about.  There  were  objects 
scattered  in  the  fine  old  French  room.  "  You  have 
lovely  things." 

"  Two." 

"Two?" 

"  Two  frocks.    I  couldn't  stay  another  day." 

"  Ah,  what  is  that?  I  couldn't  either,"  said  Lady 
Claude  soothingly.  "  And  you  have,"  she  continued, 
in  the  same  spirit,  "  your  nice  maid : 

"  Who's  indeed  a  charming  woman,  but  my  cook  in 
disguise !  "  Mrs.  Harvey  dropped. 

"  Ah,  you  are  clever !  "  her  friend  cried,  with  a  laugh 
that  was  as  a  climax  of  reassurance. 

"  Extraordinarily.  But  don't  think,"  Mrs.  Harvey 
hastened  to  add,  "  that  I  mean  that  that's  why  I'm 
here." 

Her  companion  candidly  thought.  "  Then  why  are 
you?" 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea.  I've  been  wondering  all 
the  while,  as  I've  wondered  so  often  before  on  such 
occasions,  and  without  arriving  at  any  other  reason 
than  that  London  is  so  wild." 

Lady  Claude  wondered.     "  Wild  ?  " 

"  Wild !  "  said  her  friend,  with  some  impatience. 
"  That's  the  way  London  strikes." 

"  But  do  you  call  such  an  invitation  a  blow  ?  " 

"  Yes — crushing.  No  one  else,  at  all  events,  either," 
Mrs.  Harvey  added,  "  could  tell  you  why  I'm  here." 

Lady  Claude's  power  to  receive — and  it  was  perhaps 
her  most  attaching  quality — was  greater  still,  when  she 
felt  strongly,  than  her  power  to  protest.  "  Why,  how 

7 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

can  you  say  that  when  you've  only  to  see  how  every 
one  likes  and  admires  you?  Just  look  at  the  Ambas 
sador,"  she  had  earnestly  insisted.  And  this  was  what 
had  precisely,  as  I  have  mentioned,  carried  the  stream 
of  their  talk  a  good  deal  away  from  its  source.  It  had 
therefore  not  much  further  to  go  before  setting  in  mo 
tion  the  name  of  Stuart  Straith,  as  to  whom  Lady 
Claude  confessed  to  an  interest — good-looking,  dis 
tinguished,  "  sympathetic,"  as  he  was — that  she  could 
really  almost  hate  him  for  having  done  nothing  what 
ever  to  encourage.  He  had  not  spoken  to  her  once. 

"  But,  my  dear,  if  he  hasn't  spoken  to  me!  " 

Lady  Claude  appeared  to  regret  this  not  too  much 
for  a  hint  that,  after  all,  there  might  be  a  difference. 
"Oh,but«?ttWhe?" 

"  Without  my  having  spoken  to  him  first?  "  Mrs. 
Harvey  turned  it  over.  "  Perhaps  not;  but  I  couldn't 
have  done  that."  Then,  to  explain,  and  not  only  be 
cause  Lady  Claude  was  naturally  vague,  but  because 
what  was  still  visibly  most  vivid  to  her  was  her  inde 
pendent  right  to  have  been  "  made  up  "  to :  "  And  yet 
not  because  we're  not  acquainted." 

"  You  know  him,  then?  " 

"But  too  well."' 

"  You  mean  you  don't  like  him  ?  " 

"  On  the  contrary,  I  like  him — to  distraction." 

"  Then  what's  the  matter?  "  Lady  Claude  asked  with 
some  impatience. 

Her  friend  hesitated  but  a  moment.  "  Well,  he 
wouldn't  have  me." 

"'Have'  you?" 

"  Ten  years  ago,  after  Mr.  Harvey's  death,  when,  if 
he  had  lifted  a  finger,  I  would  have  married  him." 

"But  he  didn't  lift  it?" 

"  He  was  too  grand.  I  was  too  small — by  his 
measure.  He  wanted  to  keep  himself;  he  saw  his 
future." 

8 


BROKEN   WINGS 

Lady  Claude  earnestly  followed.  "  His  present  po 
sition?  " 

"  Yes — everything  that  was  to  come  to  him ;  his 
steady  rise  in  value." 

"  Has  it  been  so  great?  " 

"  Surely — his  situation  and  name.  Don't  you  know 
his  lovely  work  and  what's  thought  of  it  ?  " 

"  Oh  yes,  I  know.  That's  why "  But  Lady 

Claude  stopped.  After  which :  "  But  if  he's  still  keep 
ing  himself  ?  " 

"  Oh,  it's  not  for  me,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey. 

"  And  evidently  not  for  me.  Whom  then,"  her 
visitor  asked,  "  does  he  think  good  enough  ?  " 

"  Oh,  these  great  people!  "  Mrs.  Harvey  smiled. 

"  But  we're  great  people — you  and  I !  "  And  Lady 
Claude  kissed  her  good  night. 

"  You  mustn't,  all  the  same,"  the  elder  woman  said, 
"  betray  the  secret  of  my  greatness,  which  I've  told 
you,  please  remember,  only  in  the  deepest  confidence." 

Her  tone  had  a  quiet  purity  of  bitterness  that  for  a 
moment  longer  held  her  friend,  after  which  Lady 
Claude  had  the  happy  inspiration  of  meeting  it  with 
graceful  gaiety.  "  It's  quite  for  the  best,  I'm  sure,  that 
Mr.  Straith  wouldn't  have  you.  You've  kept  yourself 
too ;  you'll  marry  yet — an  ambassador !  "  And  with 
another  good  night  she  reached  the  door.  "  You  say 
you  don't  get  on,  but  you  do." 

"  Ah !  "  said  Mrs.  Harvey  with  vague  attenuation. 

"  Oh  yes,  you  do,"  Lady  Claude  insisted,  while  the 
door  emphasised  it  with  a  little  clap  that  sounded 
through  the  still  house. 

Ill 

THE  first  night  of  The  New  Girl  occurred,  as  everyone 
remembers,  three  years  ago,  and  the  play  is  running 
yet,  a  fact  that  may  render  strange  the  failure  to  be 

9 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

widely  conscious  of  which  two  persons  in  the  audience 
were  guilty.  It  was  not  till  afterward  present  either 
to  Mrs.  Harvey  or  to  Stuart  Straith  that  The  New  Girl 
was  one  of  the  greatest  successes  of  modern  times.  In 
deed  if  the  question  had  been  put  to  them  on  the  spot 
they  might  have  appeared  much  at  sea.  But  this,  I 
may  as  well  immediately  say,  was  the  result  of  their 
having  found  themselves  side  by  side  in  the  stalls  and 
thereby  given  most  of  their  attention  to  their  own  pre 
dicament.  Straith  showed  that  he  felt  the  importance 
of  meeting  it  promptly,  for  he  turned  to  his  neighbour, 
who  was  already  in  her  place,  as  soon  as  her  identity 
had  come  distinct  through  his  own  arrival  and  sub 
sidence.  "  I  don't  quite  see  how  you  can  help  speaking 
to  me  now." 

Her  face  could  only  show  him  how  long  she  had  been 
aware  of  his  approach.  "  The  sound  of  your  voice, 
coming  to  me  straight,  makes  it  indeed  as  easy  for  me 
as  I  could  possibly  desire.'7 

He  looked  about  at  the  serried  rows,  the  loaded  gal 
leries  and  the  stuffed  boxes,  with  recognitions  and 
nods ;  and  this  made  between  them  another  pause,  dur 
ing  which,  while  the  music  seemed  perfunctory  and  the 
bustle  that,  in  a  London  audience,  represents  concen 
tration  increased,  they  felt  how  effectually,  in  the  thick, 
preoccupied  medium,  how  extraordinarily,  they  were 
together. 

"  Well,  that  second  afternoon  at  Mundham,  just  be 
fore  dinner,  I  was  very  near  forcing  your  hand.  But 
something  put  me  off.  You're  really  too  grand." 

"  Oh  !  "  she  murmured. 

"  Ambassadors,"  said  Stuart  Straith. 

"  Oh !  "  she  again  sounded.  And  before  anything 
more  could  pass  the  curtain  was  up.  It  came  down  in 
due  course  and  achieved,  after  various  intervals,  the 
rest  of  its  movements  without  interrupting,  for  our 
friends,  the  sense  of  an  evening  of  talk.  They  said 

10 


BROKEN   WINGS 

when  it  was  down  almost  nothing  about  the  play,  and 
when  one  of  them  toward  the  end  put  to  the  other, 
vaguely,  "  Is — a — this  thing  going?  "  the  question  had 
scarce  the  effect  of  being  even  relevant.  What  was 
clearest  to  them  was  that  the  people  about  were  some 
how  enough  taken  up  to  leave  them  at  their  ease — but 
what  taken  up  with  they  but  half  made  out.  Mrs. 
Harvey  had,  none  the  less,  mentioned  early  that  her 
presence  had  a  reason  and  that  she  ought  to  attend,  and 
her  companion  had  asked  her  what  she  thought  of  a 
certain  picture  made  at  a  given  moment  by  the  stage, 
in  the  reception  of  which  he  was  so  interested  that  it 
was  really  what  had  brought  him.  These  were  glances, 
however,  that  quickly  strayed — strayed,  for  instance 
(as  this  could  carry  them  far),  in  its  coming  to  one 
of  them  to  say  that,  whatever  the  piece  might  be,  the 
real  thing,  as  they  had  seen  it  at  Mundham,  was  more 
than  a  match  for  any  piece.  For  it  was  Mundham  that 
was,  theatrically,  the  real  thing;  better  for  scenery, 
dresses,  music,  pretty  women,  bare  shoulders,  every 
thing — even  coherent  dialogue;  a  much  bigger  and 
braver  show,  and  got  up,  as  it  were,  infinitely  more 
"  regardless."  By  Mundham  they  were  held  long 
enough  to  find  themselves,  though  with  an  equal  sur 
prise,  quite  at  one  as  to  the  special  oddity  of  their  hav 
ing  caught  each  other  in  such  a  plight.  Straith  said 
that  he  supposed  what  his  friend  meant  was  that  it  was 
odd  he  should  have  been  there;  to  which  she  returned 
that  she  had  been  imputing  to  him  exactly  that  judg 
ment  of  her  own  presence. 

"  But  why  shouldn't  you  be?  "  he  asked.  "  Isn't  that 
just  what  you  are?  Aren't  you,  in  your  way — like 
those  people — a  child  of  fortune  and  fashion  ?  " 

He  got  no  more  answer  to  this  for  some  time  than 
if  he  had  fairly  wounded  her.  He  indeed  that  evening 
got  no  answer  at  all  that  was  direct.  But  in  the  next 
interval  she  brought  out  with  abruptness,  taking  no 

ii 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

account  of  some  other  matter  he  had  just  touched, 
"  Don't  you  really  know ?  " 

She  had  paused.    "  Know  what  ?  " 

Again  she  went  on  without  heeding.  "  A  place  like 
Mundham  is,  for  me,  a  survival,  though  poor  Mund- 
ham  in  particular  won't,  for  me,  have  survived  that 
visit — for  which  it's  to  be  pitied,  isn't  it  ?  It  was  a  glit 
tering  ghost — since  laid ! — of  my  old  time." 

Straith,  at  this  almost  gave  a  start.  "  Have  you  got 
a  new  time?  " 

"  Do  you  mean  that  you  have?  " 

"  Well,"  said  Straith,  "  mine  may  now  be  called  mid 
dle-aged.  It  seems  so  long,  I  mean,  since  I  set  my 
watch  to  it." 

"  Oh,  I  haven't  even  a  watch !  "  she  returned  with  a 
laugh.  "  I'm  beyond  watches."  After  which  she 
added :  "  We  might  have  met  more — or,  I  should  say 
perhaps,  have  got  more  out  of  it  when  we  have  met." 

"  Yes,  it  has  been  too  little.  But  I've  always  ex 
plained  it  by  our  living  in  such  different  worlds." 

Mrs.  Harvey  had  an  occasional  incoherence.  "  Are 
you  unhappy  ?  " 

He  gave  her  a  singular  smile.  "  You  said  just  now 
that  you're  beyond  watches.  I'm  beyond  unhappiness." 

She  turned  from  him  and  presently  brought  out: 
"  I  ought  absolutely  to  take  away  something  of  the 
play." 

"  By  all  means.  There's  certainly  something  /  shall 
take." 

"  Ah,  then  you  must  help  me — give  it  me." 

"  With  all  my  heart,"  said  Straith,  "  if  it  can  help 
you.  It's  my  feeling  of  our  renewal." 

She  had  one  of  the  sad,  slow  head-shakes  that  at 
Mundham  had  been  impressive  to  Lady  Claude.  "  That 
won't  help  me." 

"  Then  you  must  let  me  put  to  you  now  what  I 
should  have  tried  to  get  near  enough  to  you  there  to 

12 


BROKEN   WINGS 

put  if  I  hadn't  been  so  afraid  of  the  Ambassador.  What 
has  it  been  so  long — our  impossibility  ?  " 

''  Well,  I  can  only  answer  for  my  own  vision  of  it, 
which  is — which  always  was — that  you  were  sorry  for 
me,  but  felt  a  sort  of  scruple  of  showing  me  that  you 
had  nothing  better  than  pity  to  give." 

"  May  I  come  to  see  you?  "  Straith  asked  some  min 
utes  after  this. 

Her  words,  for  which  he  had  also  awhile  to  wait, 
had,  in  truth,  as  little  as  his  own  the  appearance  of  a 
reply.  "  Are  you  unhappy — really?  Haven't  you 
everything  ?  " 

"  You're  beautiful ! "  he  said  for  all  answer. 
"Mayn't  I  come?" 

She  hesitated. 

"  Where  is  your  studio?  " 

"  Oh,  not  too  far  to  reach  from  it.  Don't  be  anxious ; 
I  can  walk,  or  even  take  the  bus." 

Mrs.  Harvey  once  more  delayed.  Then  she  an 
swered:  "  Mayn't  I  rather  come  there?  " 

"  I  shall  be  but  too  delighted." 

It  was  said  with  promptness,  even  precipitation ;  yet 
the  understanding,  shortly  after,  appeared  to  have  left 
between  them  a  certain  awkwardness,  and  it  was  al 
most  as  if  to  change  the  subject  and  relieve  them 
equally  that  she  suddenly  reminded  him  of  something 
he  had  spoken  earlier.  "  You  were  to  tell  me  why  in 
particular  you  had  to  be  here." 

"  Oh  yes.    To  see  my  dresses." 

"Yours!"     She  wondered. 

"  The  second  act.  I  made  them  out  for  them — drew 
them." 

Before  she  could  check  it  her  tone  escaped.     ''  You  ?  " 

"  I."  He  looked  straight  before  him.  "  For  the  fee. 
And  we  didn't  even  notice  them." 

"  /  didn't,"  she  confessed.  But  it  offered  the  fact  as 
a  sign  of  her  kindness  for  him,  and  this  kindness  was 

13 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

traceably  what  inspired  something  she  said  in  the 
draughty  porch,  after  the  performance,  while  the 
footman  of  the  friend,  a  fat,  rich,  immensely  pleased 
lady,  who  had  given  her  a  lift  and  then  rejoined  her 
from  a  seat  in  the  balcony,  went  off  to  make  sure  of 
the  brougham.  "  May  I  do  something  about  your 
things?" 

"'Do  something'?" 

"  When  I've  paid  you  my  visit.  Write  something — 
about  your  pictures.  I  do  a  correspondence,"  said  Mrs. 
Harvey. 

He  wondered  as  she  had  done  in  the  stalls.  "  For 
a  paper?  " 

"  The  Blackport  Banner.  A  '  London  Letter.'  The 
new  books,  the  new  plays,  the  new  twaddle  of  any  sort 
—a  little  music,  a  little  gossip,  a  little  '  art.'  You'll 
help  me — I  need  it  awfully — with  the  art.  I  do  three 
a  month." 

"  You — wonderful  you  ?  "  He  spoke  as  Lady  Claude 
had  done,  and  could  no  more  help  it  again  than  Mrs. 
Harvey  had  been  able  to  help  it  in  the  stalls. 

"  Oh,  as  you  say,  for  the  fee !  "  On  which,  as  the 
footman  signalled,  her  old  lady  began  to  plunge 
through  the  crowd. 


IV 

AT  the  studio,  where  she  came  to  him  within  the  week, 
her  first  movement  had  been  to  exclaim  on  the  splendid 
abundance  of  his  work.  She  had  looked  round  charmed 
—so  struck  as  to  be,  as  she  called  it,  crushed.  "  You've 
such  a  wonderful  lot  to  show." 

"  Indeed,  I  have !  "  said  Stuart  Straith. 

"  That's  where  you  beat  us." 

"  I  think  it  may  very  well  be,"  he  went  on,  "  where 
I  beat  almost  everyone." 


BROKEN    WINGS 

"  And  is  much  of  it  new  ?  " 

He  looked  about  with  her.  "  Some  of  it  is  pretty 
old.  But  my  things  have  a  way,  I  admit,  of  growing 
old  extraordinarily  fast.  They  seem  to  me  in  fact, 
nowadays,  quite  '  born  old/  ' 

She  had  the  manner,  after  a  little,  of  coming  back 
to  something.  "  You  are  unhappy.  You're  not  beyond 
it.  You're  just  nicely,  just  fairly  and  squarely,  in  the 
middle  of  it." 

"  Well,"  said  Straith,  "  if  it  surrounds  me  like  a 
desert,  so  that  I'm  lost  in  it,  that  comes  to  the  same 
thing.  But  I  want  you  to  tell  me  about  yourself." 

She  had  continued  at  first  to  move  about,  and  had 
taken  out  a  pocket-book,  which  she  held  up  at  him. 
"  This  time  I  shall  insist  on  notes.  You  made  my  mind 
a  blank  about  that  play,  which  is  the  sort  of  thing  we 
can't  afford.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  my  fat  old  lady  and 
the  next  day's  papers !  "  She  kept  looking,  going  up 
to  things,  saying,  "  How  wonderful!  "  and  "  Oh,  your 
way!  "  and  then  stopping  for  a  general  impression, 
something  in  the  whole  charm.  The  place,  high,  hand 
some,  neat,  with  two  or  three  pale  tapestries  and  sev 
eral  rare  old  pieces  of  furniture,  showed  a  perfection  of 
order,  an  absence  of  loose  objects,  as  if  it  had  been 
swept  and  squared  for  the  occasion  and  made  almost 
too  immaculate.  It  was  polished  and  cold — rather  cold 
for  the  season  and  the  weather;  and  Stuart  Straith 
himself,  buttoned  and  brushed,  as  fine  and  as  clean  as 
his  room,  might  at  her  arrival  have  reminded  her  of 
the  master  of  a  neat,  bare  ship  on  his  deck  awaiting 
a  cargo.  "  May  I  see  everything  ?  May  I '  use  '  every 
thing?" 

"  Oh  no ;  you  mayn't  by  any  means  use  everything. 
You  mayn't  use  half.  Did  I  spoil  your  '  London  Let 
ter  '  ?  "  he  continued  after  a  moment. 

"  No  one  can  spoil  them  as  I  spoil  them  myself.  I 
can't  do  them — I  don't  know  how,  and  don't  want  to. 

15 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

I  do  them  wrong,  and  the  people  want  such  trash.    Of 
course  they'll  sack  me." 

She  was  in  the  centre,  and  he  had  the  effect  of  going 
round  her,  restless  and  vague,  in  large,  slow  circles. 
"  Have  you  done  them  long?  " 

"  Two  or  three  months — this  lot.  But  I've  done 
others,  and  I  know  what  happens.  Oh,  my  dear,  I've 
done  strange  things !  " 

"And  is  it  a  good  job?" 

She  hesitated,  then  puffed,  prettily  enough,  an  indif 
ferent  sigh.  "  Three  and  ninepence.  Is  that  good  ?  " 
He  had  stopped  before  her,  looking  at  her  up  and  down. 
"  What  do  you  get?  "  she  went  on,  "  for  what  you  do 
for  a  play  ?  " 

"  A  little  more,  it  would  seem,  than  you.  Four  and 
sixpence.  But  I've  only  done,  as  yet,  that  one.  Noth 
ing  else  has  offered." 

"  I  see.    But  something  will,  eh  ?  " 

Poor  Straith  took  a  turn  again.  "  Did  you  like  them 
— for  colour  ?  "  But  again  he  pulled  up.  "  Oh,  I  for 
got  ;  we  didn't  notice  them !  " 

For  a  moment  they  could  laugh  about  it.  "I  noticed 
them,  I  assure  you,  in  the  Banner.  '  The  costumes  in 
the  second  act  are  of  the  most  marvellous  beauty.' 
That's  what  I  said." 

"  Oh,  that  will  fetch  the  managers !  "  But  before 
her  again  he  seemed  to  take  her  in  from  head  to  foot. 
"  You  speak  of  '  using '  things.  If  you'd  only  use 
yourself — for  my  enlightenment.  Tell  me  all." 

"  You  look  at  me,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey,  "  as  with  the 
wonder  of  who  designs  my  costumes.  How  I  dress 
on  it,  how  I  do  even  what  I  still  do  on  it,  is  that  what 
you  want  to  know  ?  " 

"  What  has  happened  to  you  ?  "  Straith  asked. 

"  How  do  I  keep  it  up  ?  "  she  continued,  as  if  she  had 
not  heard  him.  "  But  I  don't  keep  it  up.  You  do," 
she  declared,  as  she  again  looked  round  her. 

16 


BROKEN    WINGS 

Once  more  it  set  him  off,  but  for  a  pause  once  more 
almost  as  quick.  "  How  long  have  you  been ?  " 

"  Been  what  ?  "  she  asked  as  he  faltered. 

"  Unhappy." 

She  smiled  at  him  from  a  depth  of  indulgence.  "  As 
long  as  you've  been  ignorant — that  what  I've  been 
wanting  is  your  pity.  Ah,  to  have  to  know,  as  I  be 
lieved  I  did,  that  you  supposed  it  would  wound  me, 
and  not  to  have  been  able  to  make  you  see  that  it  was 
the  one  thing  left  to  me  that  would  help  me!  Give  me 
your  pity  now.  It's  all  I  want.  I  don't  care  for  any 
thing  else.  But  give  me  that." 

He  had,  as  it  happened  at  the  moment,  to  do  a  smaller 
and  a  usual  thing  before  he  could  do  one  so  great  and 
so  strange.  The  youth  whom  he  kept  for  service  ar 
rived  with  a  tea-tray,  in  arranging  a  place  for  which, 
with  the  sequel  of  serving  Mrs.  Harvey,  seating  her 
and  seeing  the  youth  again  out  of  the  room,  some  min 
utes  passed.  "  What  pity  could  I  dream  of  for  you," 
he  demanded  as  he  at  last  dropped  near  her,  "  when  I 
was  myself  so  miserably  sore?" 

"  Sore?  "  she  wondered.  "  But  you  were  happy — 
then." 

"Happy  not  to  have  struck  you  as  good  enough? 
For  I  didn't,  you  know,"  he  insisted.  "  You  had  your 
success,  which  was  so  immense.  You  had  your  high 
value,  your  future,  your  big  possibilities;  and  I  per 
fectly  understood  that,  given  those  things,  and  given 
also  my  very  much  smaller  situation,  you  should  wish 
to  keep  yourself." 

"  Oh,  oh !  "    She  gasped  as  if  hurt. 

"  I  understand  it;  but  how  could  it  really  make  me 
'  happy ' ?  "  he  asked. 

She  turned  at  him  as  with  her  hand  on  the  old  scar 
she  could  now  carry.  "  You  mean  that  all  these  years 
you've  really  not  known ?  " 

"  But  not  known  what  ?  " 

17 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

His  voice  was  so  blank  that  at  the  sound  of  it,  and 
at  something  that  looked  out  from  him,  she  only  found 
another  "  Oh,  oh !  "  which  became  the  next  instant  a 
burst  of  tears. 


SHE  had  appeared  at  first  unwilling  to  receive  him  at 
home;  but  he  understood  it  after  she  had  left  him, 
turning  over  more  and  more  everything  their  meeting 
had  shaken  to  the  surface,  and  piecing  together  mem 
ories  that  at  last,  however  darkly,  made  a  sense.  He 
was  to  call  on  her,  it  was  finally  agreed,  but  not  till  the 
end  of  the  week,  when  she  should  have  finished  "  mov 
ing  " — she  had  but  just  changed  quarters ;  and  mean 
while,  as  he  came  and  went,  mainly  in  the  cold  chamber 
of  his  own  past  endeavour,  which  looked  even  to  him 
self  as  studios  look  when  artists  are  dead  and  the 
public,  in  the  arranged  place,  are  admitted  to  stare,  he 
had  plenty  to  think  about.  What  had  come  out — he 
could  see  it  now — was  that  each,  ten  years  before,  had 
miserably  misunderstood  and  then  had  turned  for  re 
lief  from  pain  to  a  perversity  of  pride.  But  it  was 
himself  above  all  that  he  now  sharply  judged,  since 
women,  he  felt,  have  to  get  on  as  they  can,  and  for  the 
mistake  of  this  woman  there  were  reasons  he  had,  with 
a  sore  heart,  to  acknowledge.  She  had  really  found  in 
the  pomp  of  his  early  success,  at  the  time  they  used  to 
meet,  and  to  care  to,  exactly  the  ground  for  her  sense 
of  failure  with  him  that  he  had  found  in  the  vision 
of  her  gross  popularity  for  his  conviction  that  she 
judged  him  as  comparatively  small.  Each  had  blun 
dered,  as  sensitive  souls  of  the  "  artistic  temperament  " 
blunder,  into  a  conception  not  only  of  the  other's  atti 
tude,  but  of  the  other's  material  situation  at  the  mo 
ment,  that  had  thrown  them  back  on  stupid  secrecy, 
where  their  estrangement  had  grown  like  an  evil  plant 

18 


BROKEN   WINGS 

in  the  shade.  He  had  positively  believed  her  to  have 
gone  on  all  the  while  making  the  five  thousand  a  year 
that  the  first  eight  or  ten  of  her  so  supremely  happy 
novels  had  brought  her  in,  just  as  she,  on  her  side,  had 
read  into  the  felicity  of  his  first  new  hits,  his  pictures 
"  of  the  year  "  at  three  or  four  Academies,  the  absurd- 
est  theory  of  the  sort  of  career  that,  thanks  to  big 
dealers  and  intelligent  buyers,  his  gains  would  have 
built  up  for  him.  It  looked  vulgar  enough  now,  but 
it  had  been  grave  enough  then.  His  long,  detached  de 
lusion  about  her  "  prices,"  at  any  rate,  appeared  to  have 
been  more  than  matched  by  the  strange  stories  occasion 
ally  floated  to  her — and  all  to  make  her  but  draw  more 
closely  in — on  the  subject  of  his  own. 

It  was  with  each  equally  that  everything  had  changed 
— everything  but  the  stiff  consciousness  in  either  of  the 
need  to  conceal  changes  from  the  other.  If  she  had 
cherished  for  long  years  the  soreness  of  her  not  being 
"  good  "  enough,  so  this  was  what  had  counted  most 
in  her  sustained  effort  to  appear  at  least  as  good  as  he. 
London,  meanwhile,  was  big;  London  was  blind  and 
benighted;  and  nothing  had  ever  occurred  to  under 
mine  for  him  the  fiction  of  her  prosperity.  Before  his 
eyes  there,  while  she  sat  with  him,  she  had  pulled  off 
one  by  one  those  vain  coverings  of  her  state  that  she 
confessed  she  had  hitherto  done  her  best — and  so  al 
ways  with  an  eye  on  himself — deceptively  to  draw 
about  it.  He  had  felt  frozen,  as  he  listened,  at  such 
likenesses  to  things  he  knew.  He  recognised  as  she 
talked,  and  he  groaned  as  he  understood.  He  under 
stood — oh,  at  last,  whatever  he  had  not  done  before! 
And  yet  he  could  well  have  smiled,  out  of  their  common 
abyss,  at  such  odd  identities  and  recurrences.  Truly 
the  arts  were  sisters,  as  was  so  often  said;  for  what 
apparently  could  be  more  like  the  experience  of  one  than 
the  experience  of  another  ?  And  she  spared  him  things 
with  it  all.  He  felt  that  too,  just  as,  even  while  show- 

19 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

ing  her  how  he  followed,  he  had  bethought  himself  of 
closing  his  lips  for  the  hour,  none  too  soon,  on  his  own 
stale  story.  There  had  been  a  beautiful  intelligence, 
for  that  matter,  in  her  having  asked  him  nothing  more. 
She  had  overflowed  because  shaken  by  not  finding  him 
happy,  and  her  surrender  had  somehow  offered  itself 
to  him  as  her  way — the  first  that  sprang  up — of  con 
sidering  his  trouble.  She  had  left  him,  at  all  events, 
in  full  possession  of  all  the  phases  through  which  in 
"  literary  circles  "  acclaimed  states  may  pass  on  their 
regular  march  to  eclipse  and  extinction.  One  had  but 
one's  hour,  and  if  one  had  it  soon — it  was  really  al 
most  a  case  of  choice — one  didn't  have  it  late.  It  might, 
moreover,  never  even  remotely  have  approached,  at  its 
best,  things  ridiculously  rumoured.  Straith  felt,  on 
the  whole,  how  little  he  had  known  of  literary  circles 
or  of  any  mystery  but  his  own,  indeed ;  on  which,  up 
to  actual  impending  collapse,  he  had  mounted  such 
anxious  guard. 

It  was  when  he  went  on  the  Friday  to  see  her  that  he 
took  in  the  latest  of  the  phases  in  question,  which  might 
very  well  be  almost  the  final  one;  there  was  at  least 
that  comfort  in  it.  She  had  just  settled  in  a  small  flat, 
where  he  recognised  in  the  steady  disposal,  for  the  best, 
of  various  objects  she  had  not  yet  parted  with,  her 
reason  for  having  made  him  wait.  Here  they  had  to 
gether — these  two  worn  and  baffled  workers — a  won 
derful  hour  of  gladness  in  their  lost  battle  and  of 
freshness  in  their  lost  youth ;  for  it  was  not  till  Stuart 
Straith  had  also  raised  the  heavy  mask  and  laid  it  be 
side  her  own  on  the  table,  that  they  began  really  to 
feel  themselves  recover  something  of  that  possibility  of 
each  other  they  had  so  wearily  wasted.  Only  she 
couldn't  get  over  it  that  he  was  like  herself,  and  that 
what  she  had  shrunken  to  in  her  three  or  four  sim 
plified  rooms  had  its  perfect  image  in  the  hollow  show 
of  his  ordered  studio  and  his  accumulated  work.  He 

20 


BROKEN  WINGS 

told  her  everything  now,  kept  as  little  back  as  she  had 
kept  at  their  previous  meeting,  while  she  repeated  over 
and  over,  "  You — wonderful  you  ?  "  as  if  the  knowl 
edge  made  a  deeper  darkness  of  fate,  as  if  the  pain  of 
his  having  come  down  at  all  almost  quenched  the  joy 
of  his  having  come  so  much  nearer.  When  she  learned 
that  he  had  not  for  three  years  sold  a  picture — "  You, 
beautiful  you  ?  " — it  seemed  a  new  cold  breath  out  of 
the  dusk  of  her  own  outlook.  Disappointment  and 
despair  were  in  such  relations  contagious,  and  there 
was  clearly  as  much  less  again  left  to  her  as  the  little 
that  was  left  to  him.  He  showed  her,  laughing  at  the 
long  queerness  of  it,  how  awfully  little,  as  they  called 
it,  this  was.  He  let  it  all  come,  but  with  more  mirth 
than  misery,  and  with  a  final  abandonment  of  pride 
that  was  like  changing  at  the  end  of  a  dreadful  day 
from  tight  boots  to  slippers.  There  were  moments 
when  they  might  have  resembled  a  couple  united  by 
some  misdeed  and  meeting  to  decide  on  some  desperate 
course;  they  gave  themselves  so  to  the  great  irony — 
the  vision  of  the  comic  in  contrasts — that  precedes  sur 
renders  and  extinctions. 

They  went  over  the  whole  thing,  remounted  the 
dwindling  stream,  reconstructed,  explained,  under 
stood — recognised,  in  short,  the  particular  example 
they  gave,  and  how,  without  mutual  suspicion,  they  had 
been  giving  it  side  by  side.  "  We're  simply  the  case," 
Straith  familiarly  put  it,  "  of  having  been  had  enough 
of.  No  case  is  perhaps  more  common,  save  that,  for 
you  and  for  me,  each  in  our  line,  it  did  look  in  the  good 
time — didn't  it? — as  if  nobody  could  have  enough." 
With  which  they  counted  backward,  gruesome  as  it 
was,  the  symptoms  of  satiety  up  to  the  first  dawn,  and 
lived  again  together  the  unforgettable  hours — distant 
now — out  of  which  it  had  begun  to  glimmer  that  the 
truth  had  to  be  faced  and  the  right  names  given  to  the 
wrong  facts.  They  laughed  at  their  original  explana- 

21 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

tions  and  the  minor  scale,  even,  of  their  early  fears; 
compared  notes  on  the  fallibility  of  remedies  and 
hopes,  and,  more  and  more  united  in  the  identity  of 
their  lesson,  made  out  perfectly  that,  though  there  ap 
peared  to  be  many  kinds  of  success,  there  was  only  one 
kind  of  failure.  And  yet  what  had  been  hardest 
had  not  been  to  have  to  shrink,  but — the  long  game 
of  bluff,  as  Straith  called  it — to  have  to  keep  up.  It 
fairly  swept  them  away  at  present,  however,  the  huge 
ness  .of  the  relief  of  no  longer  keeping  up  as  against 
each  other.  This  gave  them  all  the  measure  of  the 
motive  their  courage,  on  either  side,  in  silence  and 
gloom,  had  forced  into  its  service. 

"  Only  what  shall  we  do  now  for  a  motive?  "  Straith 
went  on. 

She  thought.    "  A  motive  for  courage?  " 

'<  Yes— to  keep  up." 

"  And  go  again,  for  instance,  do  you  mean,  to  Mund- 
ham?  We  shall,  thank  heaven,  never  go  again  to 
Mundham.  The  Mundhams  are  over." 

"  Nous  n'irons  plus  au  bois ; 
Les  lauriers  sont  coup6s," 

sang  Straith.    "  It  does  cost." 

"  As  everything  costs  that  one  does  for  the  rich. 
It's  not  our  poor  relations  who  make  us  pay." 

"  No ;  one  must  have  means  to  acknowledge  the 
others.  We  can't  afford  the  opulent.  But  it  isn't  only 
the  money  they  take." 

"  It's  the  imagination,"  said  Mrs.  Harvey.  "  As 
they  have  none  themselves " 

"It's  an  article  we  have  to  supply ?  We  have  cer 
tainly  to  use  a  lot  to  protect  ourselves,"  Straith  agreed. 
"  And  the  strange  thing  is  that  they  like  us." 

She  thought  again.  "  That's  what  makes  it  easy  to 
cut  them.  They  forgive." 

22 


BROKEN   WINGS 

"  Yes,"  her  companion  laughed ;  "  once  they  really 

don't  know  you  enough !  " 

"  They  treat  you  as  old  friends.     But  what  do  we 
want  now  of  courage  ?  "  she  went  on. 
He  wondered.    "  Yes,  after  all,  what?  " 
"  To  keep  up,  I  mean.    Why  should  we  keep  up  ?  " 
It  seemed  to  strike  him.     "  I  see.     After  all,  why  ? 

The  courage  not  to  keep  up " 

"We  have  that,  at  least,"  she  declared,  "haven't 
we  ?  "  Standing  there  at  her  little  high-perched  win 
dow,  which  overhung  grey  housetops,  they  let  the  con 
sideration  of  this  pass  between  them  in  a  deep  look, 
as  well  as  in  a  hush  of  which  the  intensity  had  some 
thing  commensurate.  "If  we're  beaten!"  she  then 
continued. 

"  Let  us  at  least  be  beaten  together !  "  He  took  her 
in  his  arms;  she  let  herself  go,  and  he  held  her  long 
and  close  for  the  compact.  But  when  they  had  re 
covered  themselves  enough  to  handle  their  agreement 
more  responsibly,  the  words  in  which  they  confirmed 
it  broke  in  sweetness  as  well  as  sadness  from  both  to 
gether  :  "  And  now  to  work !  " 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 


MRS.  MUNDEN  had  not  yet  been  to  my  studio 
on  so  good  a  pretext  as  when  she  first  put  it  to 
me  that  it  would  be  quite  open  to  me — should  I  only 
care,  as  she  called  it,  to  throw  the  handkerchief — to 
paint  her  beautiful  sister-in-law.  I  needn't  go  here, 
more  than  is  essential,  into  the  question  of  Mrs.  Mun- 
den,  who  would  really,  by-the-way,  be  a  story  in  her 
self.  She  has  a  manner  of  her  own  of  putting  things, 
and  some  of  those  she  has  put  to  me !  Her  im 
plication  was  that  Lady  Beldonald  had  not  only  seen 
and  admired  certain  examples  of  my  work,  but  had 
literally  been  prepossessed  in  favour  of  the  painter's 
"  personality."  Had  I  been  struck  with  this  sketch  I 
might  easily  have  imagined  that  Lady  Beldonald  was 
throwing  me  the  handkerchief.  "  She  hasn't  done," 
my  visitor  said,  "  what  she  ought." 

"  Do  you  mean  she  has  done  what  she  oughtn't?  " 
"  Nothing  horrid — oh  dear,  no."    And  something  in 
Mrs.   Munden's  tone,  with  the  way  she  appeared  to 
muse  a  moment,  even  suggested  to  me  that  what  she 
"  oughtn't  "  was  perhaps  what  Lady  Beldonald  had  too 
much  neglected.     "  She  hasn't  got  on." 
"  What's  the  matter  with  her?  " 
"  Well,  to  begin  with,  she's  American." 
But  I  thought  that  was  the  way  of  ways  to  get 


on." 


24 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

"  It's  one  of  them.  But  it's  one  of  the  ways  of  being 
awfully  out  of  it  too.  There  are  so  many !  " 

"  So  many  Americans?  "  I  asked. 

:<  Yes,  plenty  of  them''  Mrs.  Munden  sighed.  "  So 
many  ways,  I  mean,  of  being  one." 

"  But  if  your  sister-in-law's  way  is  to  be  beauti 
ful ?" 

"  Oh,  there  are  different  ways  of  that  too." 

"  And  she  hasn't  taken  the  right  way  ?  " 

"  Well,"  my  friend  returned,  as  if  it  were  rather  dif 
ficult  to  express,  "  she  hasn't  done  with  it " 

"  I  see,"  I  laughed;  "  what  she  oughtn't!  " 

Mrs.  Munden  in  a  manner  corrected  me,  but  it  was 
difficult  to  express.  "  My  brother,  at  all  events,  was 
certainly  selfish.  Till  he  died  she  was  almost  never  in 
London;  they  wintered,  year  after  year,  for  what  he 
supposed  to  be  his  health — which  it  didn't  help,  since 
he  was  so  much  too  soon  to  meet  his  end — in  the  south 
of  France  and  in  the  dullest  holes  he  could  pick  out, 
and  when  they  came  back  to  England  he  always  kept 
her  in  the  country.  I  must  say  for  her  that  she  always 
behaved  beautifully.  Since  his  death  she  has  been  more 
in  London,  but  on  a  stupidly  unsuccessful  footing.  I 
don't  think  she  quite  understands.  She  hasn't  what 
/  should  call  a  life.  It  may  be,  of  course,  that  she 
doesn't  want  one.  That's  just  what  I  can't  exactly 
find  out.  I  can't  make  out  how  much  she  knows." 

"  I  can  easily  make  out,"  I  returned  with  hilarity, 
"  how  much  you  do !  " 

"  Well,  you're  very  horrid.    Perhaps  she's  too  old." 

'  Too  old  for  what?  "  I  persisted. 

"  For  anything.  Of  course  she's  no  longer  even  a 
little  young;  only  preserved — oh,  but  preserved,  like 
bottled  fruit,  in  syrup !  I  want  to  help  her,  if  only  be 
cause  she  gets  on  my  nerves,  and  I  really  think  the 
way  of  it  would  be  just  the  right  thing  of  yours  at  the 
Academy  and  on  the  line." 

25 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  But  suppose,"  I  threw  out,  "  she  should  give  on  my 
nerves  ?  " 

"  Oh,  she  will.  But  isn't  that  all  in  the  day's  work, 
and  don't  great  beauties  always ?  " 

"  You  don't,"  I  interrupted ;  but  I  at  any  rate  saw 
Lady  Beldonald  later  on — the  day  came  when  her  kins 
woman  brought  her,  and  then  I  understood  that  her 
life  had  its  centre  in  her  own  idea  of  her  appearance. 
Nothing  else  about  her  mattered — one  knew  her  all 
when  one  knew  that.  She  is  indeed  in  one  particular, 
I  think,  sole  of  her  kind — a  person  whom  vanity  has 
had  the  odd  effect  of  keeping  positively  safe  and  sound. 
This  passion  is  supposed  surely,  for  the  most  part,  to 
be  a  principle  of  perversion  and  injury,  leading  astray 
those  who  listen  to  it  and  landing  them,  sooner  or  later, 
in  this  or  that  complication ;  but  it  has  landed  her  lady 
ship  nowhere  whatever — it  has  kept  her  from  the  first 
moment  of  full  consciousness,  one  feels,  exactly  in  the 
same  place.  It  has  protected  her  from  every  danger, 
has  made  her  absolutely  proper  and  prim.  If  she  is 
"  preserved,"  as  Mrs.  Munden  originally  described  her 
to  me,  it  is  her  vanity  that  has  beautifully  done  it — 
putting  her  years  ago  in  a  plate-glass  case  and  closing 
up  the  receptacle  against  every  breath  of  air.  How 
shouldn't  she  be  preserved,  when  you  might  smash 
your  knuckles  on  this  transparency  before  you  could 
crack  it?  And  she  is — oh,  amazingly!  Preservation 
is  scarce  the  word  for  the  rare  condition  of  her  sur 
face.  She  looks  naturally  new,  as  if  she  took  out  every 
night  her  large,  lovely,  varnished  eyes  and  put  them 
in  water.  The  thing  was  to  paint  her,  I  perceived,  in 
the  glass  case — a  most  tempting,  attaching  feat;  ren 
der  to  the  full  the  shining,  interposing  plate  and  the 
general  show-window  effect. 

It  was  agreed,  though  it  was  not  quite  arranged,  that 
she  should  sit  to  me.  If  it  was  not  quite  arranged,  this 
was  because,  as  I  was  made  to  understand  from  an  early 

26 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

stage,  the  conditions  for  our  start  must  be  such  as 
should  exclude  all  elements  of  disturbance,  such,  in  a 
word,  as  she  herself  should  judge  absolutely  favour 
able.  And  it  seemed  that  these  conditions  were  easily 
imperilled.  Suddenly,  for  instance,  at  a  moment  when 
I  was  expecting  her  to  meet  an  appointment — the  first 
— that  I  had  proposed,  I  received  a  hurried  visit  from 
Mrs.  Munden,  who  came  on  her  behalf  to  let  me  know 
that  the  season  happened  just  not  to  be  propitious  and 
that  our  friend  couldn't  be  quite  sure,  to  the  hour,  when 
it  would  again  become  so.  Nothing,  she  felt,  would 
make  it  so  but  a  total  absence  of  worry. 

"  Oh,  a  '  total  absence,'  "  I  said,  "  is  a  large  order! 
We  live  in  a  worrying  world." 

"  Yes ;  and  she  feels  exactly  that — more  than  you'd 
think.  It's  in  fact  just  why  she  mustn't  have,  as  she 
has  now,  a  particular  distress  on  at  the  very  moment. 
She  wants  to  look,  of  course,  her  best,  and  such  things 
tell  on  her  appearance." 

I  shook  my  head.  "  Nothing  tells  on  her  appearance. 
Nothing  reaches  it  in  any  way;  nothing  gets  at  it. 
However,  I  can  understand  her  anxiety.  But  what's 
her  particular  distress  ?  " 

"  Why,  the  illness  of  Miss  Dadd." 

"  And  who  in  the  world's  Miss  Dadd?  " 

"  Her  most  intimate  friend  and  constant  companion 
— the  lady  who  was  with  us  here  that  first  day." 

"  Oh,  the  little  round,  black  woman  who  gurgled 
with  admiration?  " 

"  None  other.  But  she  was  taken  ill  last  week,  and 
it  may  very  well  be  that  she'll  gurgle  no  more.  She 
was  very  bad  yesterday  and  is  no  better  to-day,  and 
Nina  is  much  upset.  If  anything  happens  to  Miss 
Dadd  she'll  have  to  get  another,  and,  though  she  has 
had  two  or  three  before,  that  won't  be  so  easy." 

"Two  or  three  Miss  Dadds?  Is  it  possible?  And 
still  wanting  another !  "  I  recalled  the  poor  lady  com- 

27 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

pletely  now.  "  No ;  I  shouldn't  indeed  think  it  would 
be  easy  to  get  another.  But  why  is  a  succession  of  them 
necessary  to  Lady  Beldonald's  existence  ?  " 

"  Can't  you  guess  ?  "  Mrs.  Munden  looked  deep, 
yet  impatient.  "  They  help." 

"Help  what?    Help  whom?" 

"  Why,  every  one.  You  and  me  for  instance.  To 
do  what?  Why,  to  think  Nina  beautiful.  She  has 
them  for  that  purpose;  they  serve  as  foils,  as  accents 
serve  on  syllables,  as  terms  of  comparison.  They  make 
her  *  stand  out.'  It's  an  effect  of  contrast  that  must 
be  familiar  to  you  artists;  it's  what  a  woman  does 
when  she  puts  a  band  of  black  velvet  under  a  pearl  orna 
ment  that  may  require,  as  she  thinks,  a  little  showing 
off." 

I  wondered.  "  Do  you  mean  she  always  has  them 
black?" 

"  Dear  no ;  I've  seen  them  blue,  green,  yellow. 
They  may  be  what  they  like,  so  long  as  they're  always 
one  other  thing." 

"Hideous?" 

Mrs.  Munden  hesitated.  "  Hideous  is  too  much  to 
say;  she  doesn't  really  require  them  as  bad  as  that. 
But  consistently,  cheerfully,  loyally  plain.  It's  really 
a  most  happy  relation.  She  loves  them  for  it." 

"  And  for  what  do  they  love  her?  " 

"  Why,  just  for  the  amiability  that  they  produce  in 
her.  Then,  also,  for  their  '  home.'  It's  a  career  for 
them." 

"  I  see.  But  if  that's  the  case,"  I  asked,  "  why  are 
they  so  difficult  to  find?  " 

"  Oh,  they  must  be  safe ;  it's  all  in  that :  her  being 
able  to  depend  on  them  to  keep  to  the  terms  of  the 
bargain  and  never  have  moments  of  rising — as  even 
the  ugliest  woman  will  now  and  then  (say  when  she's 
in  love) — superior  to  themselves." 

I  turned  it  over.  "  Then  if  they  can't  inspire 

28 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

passions  the  poor  things  mayn't  even  at  least  feel 
them?" 

"  She  distinctly  deprecates  it.  That's  why  such  a 
man  as  you  may  be,  after  all,  a  complication." 

I  continued  to  muse.  "  You're  very  sure  Miss  Dadd's 
ailment  isn't  an  affection  that,  being  smothered,  has 
struck  in?"  My  joke,  however,  was  not  well  timed, 
for  I  afterwards  learned  that  the  unfortunate  lady's 
state  had  been,  even  while  I  spoke,  such  as  to  forbid 
all  hope.  The  worst  symptoms  had  appeared ;  she  was 
not  destined  to  recover ;  and  a  week  later  I  heard  from 
Mrs.  Munden  that  she  would  in  fact  "  gurgle "  no 
more. 

II 

ALL  this,  for  Lady  Beldonald,  had  been  an  agitation 
so  great  that  access  to  her  apartment  was  denied  for  a 
time  even  to  her  sister-in-law.  It  was  much  more  out 
of  the  question,  of  course,  that  she  should  unveil  her 
face  to  a  person  of  my  special  business  with  it ;  so  that 
the  question  of  the  portrait  was,  by  common  consent, 
postponed  to  that  of  the  installation  of  a  successor  to 
her  late  companion.  Such  a  successor,  I  gathered  from 
Mrs.  Munden,  widowed,  childless,  and  lonely,  as  well 
as  inapt  for  the  minor  offices,  she  had  absolutely  to 
have ;  a  more  or  less  humble  alter  ego  to  deal  with  the 
servants,  keep  the  accounts,  make  the  tea  and  arrange 
the  light.  Nothing  seemed  more  natural  than  that 
she  should  marry  again,  and  obviously  that  might 
come;  yet  the  predecessors  of  Miss  Dadd  had  been 
contemporaneous  with  a  first  husband,  and  others 
formed  in  her  image  might  be  contemporaneous  with 
a  second.  I  was  much  occupied  in  those  months,  at 
any  rate,  so  that  these  questions  and  their  ramifications 
lost  themselves  for  a  while  to  my  view,  and  I  was  only 
brought  back  to  them  by  Mrs.  Munden's  coming  to 

29 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

me  one  day  with  the  news  that  we  were  all  right  again 
— her  sister-in-law  was  once  more  "  suited."  A  cer 
tain  Mrs.  Brash,  an  American  relative  whom  she  had 
not  seen  for  years,  but  with  whom  she  had  continued 
to  communicate,  was  to  come  out  to  her  immediately; 
and  this  person,  it  appeared,  could  be  quite  trusted  to 
meet  the  conditions.  She  was  ugly — ugly  enough, 
without  abuse  of  it,  and  she  was  unlimitedly  good. 
The  position  offered  her  by  Lady  Beldonald  was,  more 
over,  exactly  what  she  needed;  widowed  also,  after 
many  troubles  and  reverses,  with  her  fortune  of  the 
smallest  and  her  various  children  either  buried  or  placed 
about,  she  had  never  had  time  or  means  to  come  to 
England,  and  would  really  be  grateful  in  her  declining 
years  for  the  new  experience  and  the  pleasant  light 
work  involved  in  her  cousin's  hospitality.  They  had 
been  much  together  early  in  life,  and  Lady  Beldonald 
was  immensely  fond  of  her — would  have  in  fact  tried 
to  get  hold  of  her  before  had  not  Mrs.  Brash  been  al 
ways  in  bondage  to  family  duties,  to  the  variety  of  her 
tribulations.  I  dare  say  I  laughed  at  my  friend's  use 
of  the  term  "  position  " — the  position,  one  might  call 
it,  of  a  candlestick  or  a  sign-post,  and  I  dare  say  I  must 
have  asked  if  the  special  service  the  poor  lady  was  to 
render  had  been  made  clear  to  her.  Mrs.  Munden  left 
me,  at  all  events,  with  the  rather  droll  image  of  her 
faring  forth,  across  the  sea,  quite  consciously  and  re 
signedly  to  perform  it. 

The  point  of  the  communication  had,  however,  been 
that  my  sitter  was  again  looking  up  and  would  doubt 
less,  on  the  arrival  and  due  initiation  of  Mrs.  Brash, 
be  in  form  really  to  wait  on  me.  The  situation  must, 
further,  to  my  knowledge,  have  developed  happily,  for 
I  arranged  with  Mrs.  Munden  that  our  friend,  now  all 
ready  to  begin,  but  wanting  first  just  to  see  the  things 
I  had  most  recently  done,  should  come  once  more,  as 
a  final  preliminary,  to  my  studio.  A  good  foreign 

30 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

friend  of  mine,  a  French  painter,  Paul  Outreau,  was 
at  the  moment  in  London,  and  I  had  proposed,  as  he 
was  much  interested  in  types,  to  get  together  for  his 
amusement  a  small  afternoon  party.  Everyone  came, 
my  big  room  was  full,  there  was  music  and  a  modest 
spread;  and  I  have  not  forgotten  the  light  of  admira 
tion  in  Outreau' s  expressive  face  as,  at  the  end  of 
half  an  hour,  he  came  up  to  me  in  his  enthusiasm. 

"  Bonte  divine,  tnon  cher — que  cette  vieille  est  done 
belle!  " 

I  had  tried  to  collect  all  the  beauty  I  could,  and 
also  all  the  youth,  so  that  for  a  moment  I  was  at  a  loss. 
I  had  talked  to  many  people  and  provided  for  the  music, 
and  there  were  figures  in  the  crowd  that  were  still  lost 
to  me.  "  What  old  woman  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  her  name — she  was  over  by  the  door 
a  moment  ago.  I  asked  somebody  and  was  told,  I 
think,  that  she's  American." 

I  looked  about  and  saw  one  of  my  guests  attach  a 
pair  of  fine  eyes  to  Outreau  very  much  as  if  she  knew  he 
must  be  talking  of  her.  "  Oh,  Lady  Beldonald !  Yes, 
she's  handsome;  but  the  great  point  about  her  is  that 
she  has  been  '  put  up '  to  keep,  and  that  she  wouldn't 
be  flattered  if  she  knew  you  spoke  of  her  as  old.  A 
box  of  sardines  is  only  '  old '  after  it  has  been  opened. 
Lady  Beldonald  never  has  yet  been — but  I'm  going  to 
do  it."  I  joked,  but  I  was  somehow  disappointed.  It 
was  a  type  that,  with  his  unerring  sense  for  the  banal, 
I  shouldn't  have  expected  Outreau  to  pick  out. 

"You're  going  to  paint  her?  But,  my  dear  man, 
she  is  painted — and  as  neither  you  nor  I  can  do  it. 
Ou  est-elle  done?  "  He  had  lost  her,  and  I  saw  I  had 
made  a  mistake.  "  She's  the  greatest  of  all  the  great 
Holbeins." 

I  was  relieved.  "  Ah,  then,  not  Lady  Beldonald ! 
But  do  I  possess  a  Holbein,  of  any  price,  unawares  ?  " 

"  There  she  is — there  she  is !    Dear,  dear,  dear,  what 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

a  head !  "  And  I  saw  whom  he  meant — and  what :  a 
small  old  lady  in  a  black  dress  and  a  black  bonnet,  both 
relieved  with  a  little  white,  who  had  evidently  just 
changed  her  place  to  reach  a  corner  from  which  more 
of  the  room  and  of  the  scene  was  presented  to  her. 
She  appeared  unnoticed  and  unknown,  and  I  imme 
diately  recognised  that  some  other  guest  must  have 
brought  her  and,  for  want  of  opportunity,  had  as  yet 
to  call  my  attention  to  her.  But  two  things,  simulta 
neously  with  this  and  with  each  other,  struck  me  with 
force;  one  of  them  the  truth  of  Outreau's  description 
of  her,  the  other  the  fact  that  the  person  bringing  her 
could  only  have  been  Lady  Beldonald.  She  was  a 
Holbein — of  the  first  water;  yet  she  was  also  Mrs. 
Brash,  the  imported  "  foil,"  the  indispensable  "  accent," 
the  successor  to  the  dreary  Miss  Dadd!  By  the  time 
I  had  put  these  things  together — Outreau's  "  Ameri 
can  "  having  helped  me — I  was  in  just  such  full  pos 
session  of  her  face  as  I  had  found  myself,  on  the  other 
first  occasion,  of  that  of  her  patroness.  Only  with  so 
different  a  consequence.  I  couldn't  look  at  her  enough, 
and  I  stared  and  stared  till  I  became  aware  she  might 
have  fancied  me  challenging  her  as  a  person  unpre- 
sented.  "  All  the  same,"  Outreau  went  on,  equally 
held,  "  c'est  une  tete  a  faire.  If  I  were  only  staying  long 
enough  for  a  crack  at  her !  But  I  tell  you  what  " — and 
he  seized  my  arm — "  bring  her  over !  " 

"Over?" 

"  To  Paris.    She'd  have  a  succes  fou" 

"  Ah,  thanks,  my  dear  fellow,"  I  was  now  quite  in 
a  position  to  say;  "  she's  the  handsomest  thing  in  Lon 
don,  and  " — for  what  I  might  do  with  her  was  already 
before  me  with  intensity — "  I  propose  to  keep  her  to 
myself."  It  was  before  me  with  intensity,  in  the  light 
of  Mrs.  Brash's  distant  perfection  of  a  little  white  old 
face,  in  which  every  wrinkle  was  the  touch  of  a  master ; 
but  something  else,  I  suddenly  felt,  was  not  less  so, 

32 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

for  Lady  Beldonald,  in  the  other  quarter,  and  though 
she  couldn't  have  made  out  the  subject  of  our  notice, 
continued  to  fix  us,  and  her  eyes  had  the  challenge  of 
those  of  the  woman  of  consequence  who  has  missed 
something.  A  moment  later  I  was  close  to  her,  apolo 
gising  first  for  not  having  been  more  on  the  spot  at 
her  arrival,  but  saying  in  the  next  breath  uncontrolla 
bly,  "  Why,  my  dear  lady,  it's  a  Holbein !  " 

"A  Holbein?     What?" 

"  Why,  the  wonderful  sharp  old  face — so  extraor 
dinarily,  consummately  drawn — in  the  frame  of  black 
velvet.  That  of  Mrs.  Brash,  I  mean — isn't  it  her 
name? — your  companion." 

This  was  the  beginning  of  a  most  odd  matter — the 
essence  of  my  anecdote ;  and  I  think  the  very  first  note 
of  the  oddity  must  have  sounded  for  me  in  the  tone 
in  which  her  ladyship  spoke  after  giving  me  a  silent 
look.  It  seemed  to  come  to  me  out  of  a  distance  im 
measurably  removed  from  Holbein.  "  Mrs.  Brash  is 
not  my  *  companion  '  in  the  sense  you  appear  to  mean. 
She's  my  rather  near  relation  and  a  very  dear  old 
friend.  I  love  her — and  you  must  know  her." 

"  Know  her  ?  Rather !  Why,  to  see  her  is  to  want, 
on  the  spot,  is  to  *  go  '  for  her.  She  also  must  sit  for 
me." 

"She?  Louisa  Brash?"  If  Lady  Beldonald  had 
the  theory  that  her  beauty  directly  showed  it  when 
things  were  not  well  with  her,  this  impression,  which 
the  fixed  sweetness  of  her  serenity  had  hitherto  struck 
me  by  no  means  as  justifying,  gave  me  now  my  first 
glimpse  of  its  grounds.  It  was  as  if  I  had  never  before 
seen  her  face  invaded  by  anything  I  should  have  called 
an  expression.  This  expression,  moreover,  was  of  the 
faintest — was  like  the  effect  produced  on  a  surface  by 
an  agitation  both  deep  within  and  as  yet  much  con 
fused.  "Have  you  told  her  so?"  she  then  quickly 
asked,  as  if  to  soften  the  sound  of  her  surprise. 

33 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

"  Dear  no,  I've  but  just  noticed  her — Outreau  a  mo 
ment  ago  put  me  on  her.  But  we're  both  so  taken,  and 
he  also  wants " 

"To  paint  her?"  Lady  Beldonald  uncontrollably 
murmured. 

"  Don't  be  afraid  we  shall  fight  for  her,"  I  returned 
with  a  laugh  for  this  tone.  Mrs.  Brash  was  still  where 
I  could  see  her  without  appearing  to  stare,  and  she 
mightn't  have  seen  I  was  looking  at  her,  though  her 
protectress,  I  am  afraid,  could  scarce  have  failed  of 
this  perception.  "  We  must  each  take  our  turn,  and 
at  any  rate  she's  a  wonderful  thing,  so  that,  if  you'll 
take  her  to  Paris,  Outreau  promises  her  there " 

"  There?  "  my  companion  gasped. 

"  A  career  bigger  still  than  among  us,  as  he  con 
siders  that  we  haven't  half  their  eye.  He  guarantees 
her  a  succes  fou." 

She  couldn't  get  over  it.  "  Louisa  Brash.  In 
Paris?" 

"They  do  see,"  I  exclaimed,  "more  than  we;  and 
they  live  extraordinarily,  don't  you  know?  in  that. 
But  she'll  do  something  here  too." 

"And  what  will  she  do?" 

If,  frankly,  now,  I  couldn't  help  giving  Mrs.  Brash 
a  longer  look,  so  after  it  I  could  as  little  resist  sound 
ing  my  interlocutress.  "  You'll  see.  Only  give  her 
time."" 

She  said  nothing  during  the  moment  in  which  she 
met  my  eyes ;  but  then :  "  Time,  it  seems  to  me,  is  ex 
actly  what  you  and  your  friend  want.  If  you  haven't 
talked  with  her " 

"  We  haven't  seen  her  ?  Oh,  we  see  bang  off — with 
a  click  like  a  steel  spring.  It's  our  trade ;  it's  our  life ; 
and  we  should  be  donkeys  if  we  made  mistakes.  That's 
the  way  I  saw  you  yourself,  my  lady,  if  I  may  say  so; 
that's  the  way,  with  a  long  pin  straight  through  your 
body,  I've  got  you.  And  just  so  I've  got  her." 

34 


THE  BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

All  this,  for  reasons,  had  brought  my  guest  to  tier 
feet ;  but  her  eyes,  while  we  talked,  had  never  once  fol 
lowed  the  direction  of  mine.  "  You  call  her  a  Hol 
bein?" 

"  Outreau  did,  and  I  of  course  immediately  recog 
nised  it.  Don't  you?  She  brings  the  old  boy  to  life! 
It's  just  as  I  should  call  you  a  Titian.  You  bring 
'him  to  life." 

She  couldn't  be  said  to  relax,  because  she  couldn't 
be  said  to  have  hardened;  but  something  at  any  rate 
on  this  took  place  in  her — something  indeed  quite 
disconnected  from  what  I  would  have  called  her. 
"  Don't  you  understand  that  she  has  always  been  sup 
posed ?  "  It  had  the  ring  of  impatience ;  never 
theless,  on  a  scruple,  it  stopped  short. 

I  knew  what  it  was,  however,  well  enough  to  say 
it  for  her  if  she  preferred.  "  To  be  nothing  whatever 
to  look  at?  To  be  unfortunately  plain — or  even  if  you 
like  repulsively  ugly?  Oh  yes,  I  understand  it  per 
fectly,  just  as  I  understand — I  have  to  as  a  part  of  my 
trade — many  other  forms  of  stupidity.  It's  nothing 
new  to  one  that  ninety-nine  people  out  of  a  hundred 
have  no  eyes,  no  sense,  no  taste.  There  are  whole  com 
munities  impenetrably  sealed.  I  don't  say  your  friend 
is  a  person  to  make  the  men  turn  round  in  Regent 
Street.  But  it  adds  to  the  joy  of  the  few  who  do 
see  that  they  have  it  so  much  to  themselves.  Where 
in  the  world  can  she  have  lived?  You  must  tell 
me  all  about  that — or  rather,  if  she'll  be  so  good,  she 
must." 

"  You  mean  then  to  speak  to  her ?  " 

I  wondered  as  she  pulled  up  again.  "  Of  her 
beauty?" 

"  Her  beauty !  "  cried  Lady  Beldonald  so  loud  that 
two  or  three  persons  looked  round. 

"  Ah,  with  every  precaution  of  respect !  "  I  declared 
in  a  much  lower  tone.  But  her  back  was  by  this  time 

35 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

turned  to  me,  and  in  the  movement,  as  it  were,  one  of 
the  strangest  little  dramas  I  have  ever  known  was  well 
launched. 

Ill 

IT  was  a  drama  of  small,  smothered  intensely  private 
things,  and  I  knew  of  but  one  other  person  in  the  secret ; 
yet  that  person  and  I  found  it  exquisitely  susceptible 
of  notation,  followed  it  with  an  interest  the  mutual 
communication  of  which  did  much  for  our  enjoyment, 
and  were  present  with  emotion  at  its  touching  catas 
trophe.  The  small  case — for  so  small  a  case — had 
made  a  great  stride  even  before  my  little  party  sep 
arated,  and  in  fact  within  the  next  ten  minutes. 

In  that  space  of  time  two  things  had  happened ;  one 
of  which  was  that  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mrs. 
Brash,  and  the  other  that  Mrs.  Munden  reached  me, 
cleaving  the  crowd,  with  one  of  her  usual  pieces  of 
news.  What  she  had  to  impart  was  that,  on  her  hav 
ing  just  before  asked  Nina  if  the  conditions  of  our 
sitting  had  been  arranged  with  me,  Nina  had  replied, 
with  something  like  perversity,  that  she  didn't  propose 
to  arrange  them,  that  the  whole  affair  was  "  off " 
again,  and  that  she  preferred  not  to  be,  for  the  present, 
further  pressed.  The  question  for  Mrs.  Munden  was 
naturally  what  had  happened  and  whether  I  under 
stood.  Oh,  I  understood  perfectly,  and  what  I  at  first 
most  understood  was  that  even  when  I  had  brought 
in  the  name  of  Mrs.  Brash  intelligence  was  not  yet  in 
Mrs.  Munden.  She  was  quite  as  surprised  as  Lady 
Beldonald  had  been  on  hearing  of  the  esteem  in  which 
I  held  Mrs.  Brash's  appearance.  She  was  stupefied  at 
learning  that  I  had  just  in  my  ardour  proposed  to  the 
possessor  of  it  to  sit  to  me.  Only  she  came  round 
promptly — which  Lady  Beldonald  really  never  did. 
Mrs.  Munden  was  in  fact  wonderful ;  for  when  I  had 

36 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

given  her  quickly  "  Why,  she's  a  Holbein,  you  know," 
she  took  it  up,  after  a  first  fine  vacancy,  with  an  imme 
diate  abysmal  "  Oh,  is  she  ?  "  that,  as  a  piece  of  social 
gymnastics,  did  her  the  greatest  honour ;  and  she  was 
in  fact  the  first  in  London  to  spread  the  tidings.  For 
a  face-about  it  was  magnificent.  But  she  was  also  the 
first,  I  must  add,  to  see  what  would  really  happen — 
though  this  she  put  before  me  only  a  week  or  two  later. 
"  It  will  kill  her,  my  dear — that's  what  it  will  do !  " 
She  meant  neither  more  nor  less  than  that  it  would 
kill  Lady  Beldonald  if  I  were  to  paint  Mrs.  Brash; 
for  at  this  lurid  light  had  we  arrived  in  so  short  a 
space  of  time.  It  was  for  me  to  decide  whether  my 
aesthetic  need  of  giving  life  to  my  idea  was  such  as  to 
justify  me  in  destroying  it  in  a  woman  after  all,  in 
most  eyes,  so  beautiful.  The  situation  was,  after  all, 
sufficiently  queer;  for  it  remained  to  be  seen  what  I 
should  positively  gain  by  giving  up  Mrs.  Brash.  I 
appeared  to  have  in  any  case  lost  Lady  Beldonald,  now 
too  "  upset " — it  was  always  Mrs.  Munden's  word 
about  her  and,  as  I  inferred,  her  own  about  herself — 
to  meet  me  again  on  our  previous  footing.  The  only 
thing,  I  of  course  soon  saw,  was  to  temporise — to  drop 
the  whole  question  for  the  present  and  yet  so  far  as 
possible  keep  each  of  the  pair  in  view.  I  may  as  well 
say  at  once  that  this  plan  and  this  process  gave  their 
principal  interest  to  the  next  several  months.  Mrs. 
Brash  had  turned  up,  if  I  remember,  early  in  the  new 
year,  and  her  little  wonderful  career  was  in  our  par 
ticular  circle  one  of  the  features  of  the  following  sea 
son.  It  was  at  all  events  for  myself  the  most  attach 
ing  ;  it  is  not  my  fault  if  I  am  so  put  together  as  often 
to  find  more  life  in  situations  obscure  and  subject  to 
interpretation  than  in  the  gross  rattle  of  the  fore 
ground.  And  there  were  all  sorts  of  things,  things 
touching,  amusing,  mystifying — and  above  all  such  an 
instance  as  I  had  never  yet  met — in  this  funny  little 

37 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

fortune  of  the  useful  American  cousin.  Mrs.  Munden 
was  promptly  at  one  with  me  as  to  the  rarity  and,  to 
a  near  and  human  view,  the  beauty  and  interest  of  the 
position.  We  had  neither  of  us  ever  before  seen  that 
degree,  and  that  special  sort  of  personal  success  come 
to  a  woman  for  the  first  time  so  late  in  life.  I  found 
it  an  example  of  poetic,  of  absolutely  retributive,  jus 
tice;  so  that  my  desire  grew  great  to  work  it,  as  we 
say,  on  those  lines.  I  had  seen  it  all  from  the  original 
moment  at  my  studio ;  the  poor  lady  had  never  known 
an  hour's  appreciation — which,  moreover,  in  perfect 
good  faith,  she  had  never  missed.  The  very  first  thing 
I  did  after  producing  so  unintentionally  the  resentful 
retreat  of  her  protectress  had  been  to  go  straight  over 
to  her  and  say  almost  without  preliminaries  that  I 
should  hold  myself  immeasurably  obliged  if  she  would 
give  me  a  few  sittings.  What  I  thus  came  face  to  face 
with  was,  on  the  instant,  her  whole  unenlightened  past, 
and  the  full,  if  foreshortened,  revelation  of  what  among 
us  all  was  now  unfailingly  in  store  for  her.  To  turn 
the  handle  and  start  that  tune  came  to  me  on  the  spot 
as  a  temptation.  Here  was  a  poor  lady  who  had  waited 
for  the  approach  of  old  age  to  find  out  what  she  was 
worth.  Here  was  a  benighted  being  to  whom  it  was 
to  be  disclosed  in  her  fifty-seventh  year  (I  was  to  make 
that  out)  that  she  had  something  that  might  pass  for 
a  face.  She  looked  much  more  than  her  age,  and  was 
fairly  frightened — as  if  I  had  been  trying  on  her  some 
possibly  heartless  London  trick — when  she  had  taken 
in  my  appeal.  That  showed  me  in  what  an  air  she 
had  lived  and — as  I  should  have  been  tempted  to  put 
it  had  I  spoken  out — among  what  children  of  darkness. 
Later  on  I  did  them  more  justice;  saw  more  that  her 
wonderful  points  must  have  been  points  largely  the 
fruit  of  time,  and  even  that  possibly  she  might  never 
in  all  her  life  have  looked  so  well  as  at  this  particular 
moment.  It  might  have  been  that  if  her  hour  had 

38 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

struck  I  just  happened  to  be  present  at  the  striking. 
What  had  occurred,  all  the  same,  was  at  the  worst  a 
sufficient  comedy. 

The  famous  "  irony  of  fate  "  takes  many  forms,  but 
I  had  never  yet  seen  it  take  quite  this  one.  She  had 
been  "  had  over  "  on  an  understanding,  and  she  was 
not  playing  fair.  She  had  broken  the  law  of  her  ugli 
ness  and  had  turned  beautiful  on  the  hands  of  her  em 
ployer.  More  interesting  even  perhaps  than  a  view  of 
the  conscious  triumph  that  this  might  prepare  for  her, 
and  of  which,  had  I  doubted  of  my  own  judgment,  I 
could  still  take  Outreau's  fine  start  as  the  full  guaran 
tee — more  interesting  was  the  question  of  the  process 
by  which  such  a  history  could  get  itself  enacted.  The 
curious  thing  was  that,  all  the  while,  the  reasons  of 
her  having  passed  for  plain — the  reasons  for  Lady  Bel- 
donald's  fond  calculation,  which  they  quite  justified — 
were  written  large  in  her  face,  so  large  that  it  was  easy 
to  understand  them  as  the  only  ones  she  herself  had 
ever  read.  What  was  it,  then,  that  actually  made  the 
old  stale  sentence  mean  something  so  different? — into 
what  new  combinations,  what  extraordinary  language, 
unknown  but  understood  at  a  glance,  had  time  and  life 
translated  it  ?  The  only  thing  to  be  said  was  that  time 
and  life  were  artists  who  beat  us  all,  working  with 
recipes  and  secrets  that  we  could  never  find  out.  I 
really  ought  to  have,  like  a  lecturer  or  a  showman,  a 
chart  or  a  blackboard  to  present  properly  the  relation, 
in  the  wonderful  old  tender,  battered,  blanched  face, 
between  the  original  elements  and  the  exquisite  final 
"  style."  I  could  do  it  with  chalks,  but  I  can  scarcely 
do  it  thus.  However,  the  thing  was,  for  any  artist  who 
respected  himself,  to  feel  it — which  I  abundantly  did; 
and  then  not  to  conceal  from  her  that  I  felt  it— 
which  I  neglected  as  little.  But  she  was  really,  to  do 
her  complete  justice,  the  last  to  understand ;  and  I  am 
not  sure  that,  to  the  end — for  there  was  an  end — she 

39 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

quite  made  it  all  out  or  knew  where  she  was.  When 
you  have  been  brought  up  for  fifty  years  on  black,  it 
must  be  hard  to  adjust  your  organism,  at  a  day's  notice, 
to  gold-colour.  Her  whole  nature  had  been  pitched 
in  the  key  of  her  supposed  plainness.  She  had  known 
how  to  be  ugly — it  was  the  only  thing  she  had  learnt 
save,  if  possible,  how  not  to  mind  it.  Being  beautiful, 
at  any  rate,  took  a  new  set  of  muscles.  It  wras  on  the 
prior  theory,  literally,  that  she  had  developed  her  ad 
mirable  dress,  instinctively  felicitous,  always  either 
black  or  white,  and  a  matter  of  rather  severe  squareness 
and  studied  line.  She  was  magnificently  neat;  every 
thing  she  showed  had  a  way  of  looking  both  old  and 
fresh ;  and  there  was  on  every  occasion  the  same  pict 
ure  in  her  draped  head — draped  in  low-falling  black — 
and  the  fine  white  plaits  (of  a  painter's  white,  some 
how)  disposed  on  her  chest.  What  had  happened  was 
that  these  arrangements,  determined  by  certain  consid 
erations,  lent  themselves  in  effect  much  better  to  cer 
tain  others.  Adopted  as  a  kind  of  refuge,  they  had 
really  only  deepened  her  accent.  It  was  singular,  more 
over,  that,  so  constituted,  there  was  nothing  in  her 
aspect  of  the  ascetic  or  the  nun.  She  was  a  good,  hard, 
sixteenth-century  figure,  not  withered  with  innocence, 
bleached  rather  by  life  in  the  open.  She  was,  in  short, 
just  what  we  had  made  of  her,  a  Holbein  for  a  great 
museum;  and  our  position,  Mrs.  Munden's  and  mine, 
rapidly  became  that  of  persons  having  such  a  treasure 
to  dispose  of.  The  world — I  speak  of  course  mainly 
of  the  art-world — flocked  to  see  it. 

IV 

"  BUT  has  she  any  idea  herself,  poor  thing?  "  was  the 
way  I  had  put  it  to  Mrs.  Munden  on  our  next  meet 
ing  after  the  incident  at  my  studio;  with  the  effect, 
however,  only  of  leaving  my  friend  at  first  to  take  me 

40 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

as  alluding  to  Mrs.  Brash's  possible  prevision  of  the 
chatter  she  might  create.  I  had  my  own  sense  of  that 
— this  prevision  had  been  nil;  the  question  was  of 
her  consciousness  of  the  office  for  which  Lady  Bel- 
donald  had  counted  on  her  and  for  which  we  were  so 
promptly  proceeding  to  spoil  her  altogether. 

"  Oh,  I  think  she  arrived  with  a  goodish  notion," 
Mrs.  Munden  had  replied  when  I  had  explained ;  "  for 
she's  clever  too,  you  know,  as  well  as  good-looking,  and 
I  don't  see  how,  if  she  ever  really  knew  Nina,  she  could 
have  supposed  for  a  moment  that  she  was  not  wanted 
for  whatever  she  might  have  left  to  give  up.  Hasn't 
she  moreover  always  been  made  to  feel  that  she's  ugly 
enough  for  anything?  "  It  was  even  at  this  point  al 
ready  wonderful  how  my  friend  had  mastered  the  case, 
and  what  lights,  alike  for  its  past  and  its  future,  she 
was  prepared  to  throw  on  it.  "  If  she  has  seen  herself 
as  ugly  enough  for  anything,  she  has  seen  herself — and 
that  was  the  only  way — as  ugly  enough  for  Nina ;  and 
she  has  had  her  own  manner  of  showing  that  she  un 
derstands  without  making  Nina  commit  herself  to  any 
thing  vulgar.  Women  are  never  without  ways  for 
doing  such  things — both  for  communicating  and  re 
ceiving  knowledge — that  I  can't  explain  to  you,  and 
that  you  wouldn't  understand  if  I  could,  as  you  must 
be  a  woman  even  to  do  that.  I  dare  say  they've  ex 
pressed  it  all  to  each  other  simply  in  the  language  of 
kisses.  But  doesn't  it,  at  any  rate,  make  something 
rather  beautiful  of  the  relation  between  them  as  affected 
by  our  discovery  ?  " 

I  had  a  laugh  for  her  plural  possessive.  "  The  point 
is,  of  course,  that  if  there  was  a  conscious  bargain,  and 
our  action  on  Mrs.  Brash  is  to  deprive  her  of  the  sense 
of  keeping  her  side  of  it,  various  things  may  happen 
that  won't  be  good  either  for  her  or  for  ourselves.  She 
may  conscientiously  throw  up  the  position/' 

"  Yes,"  my  companion  mused — "  for  she  is  conscien- 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

tious.  Or  Nina,  without  waiting  for  that,  may  cast  her 
forth." 

I  faced  it  all.    "  Then  we  should  have  to  keep  her." 

"  As  a  regular  model  ?  "  Mrs.  Munden  was  ready 
for  anything.  "  Oh,  that  would  be  lovely !  " 

But  I  further  worked  it  out.  "  The  difficulty  is  that 
she's  not  a  model,  hang  it — that  she's  too  good  for  one, 
that  she's  the  very  thing  herself.  When  Outreau  and 
I  have  each  had  our  go,  that  will  be  all;  there'll  be 
nothing  left  for  anyone  else.  Therefore  it  behoves  us 
quite  to  understand  that  our  attitude's  a  responsibility. 
If  we  can't  do  for  her  positively  more  than  Nina 
does " 

"  We  must  let  her  alone?  "  My  companion  contin 
ued  to  muse.  "  I  see !  " 

"  Yet  don't,"  I  returned,  "  see  too  much.  We  can 
do  more." 

"  Than  Nina  ?  "  She  was  again  on  the  spot.  "  It 
wouldn't,  after  all,  be  difficult^  We  only  want  the  di 
rectly  opposite  thing — and  which  is  the  only  one  the 
poor  dear  can  give.  Unless,  indeed,"  she  suggested, 
"  we  simply  retract — we  back  out." 

I  turned  it  over.  "  It's  too  late  for  that.  Whether 
Mrs.  Brash's  peace  is  gone,  I  can't  say.  But  Nina's  is." 

"  Yes,  and  there's  no  way  to  bring  it  back  that  won't 
sacrifice  her  friend.  We  can't  turn  round  and  say  Mrs. 
Brash  is  ugly,  can  we  ?  But  fancy  Nina's  not  having 
seen!  "  Mrs.  Munden  exclaimed. 

"  She  doesn't  see  now,"  I  answered.  "  She  can't, 
I'm  certain,  make  out  what  we  mean.  The  woman, 
for  her  still,  is  just  what  she  always  was.  But  she  has, 
nevertheless,  had  her  stroke,  and  her  blindness,  while 
she  wavers  and  gropes  in  the  dark,  only  adds  to  her 
discomfort.  Her  blow  was  to  see  the  attention  of  the 
world  deviate." 

"  All  the  same,  I  don't  think,  you  know,"  my  inter 
locutress  said,  "  that  Nina  will  have  made  her  a  scene, 

42 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

or  that,  whatever  we  do,  she'll  ever  make  her  one. 
That  isn't  the  way  it  will  happen,  for  she's  exactly  as 
conscientious  as  Mrs.  Brash." 

"  Then  what  is  the  way?  "  I  asked. 

"  It  will  just  happen  in  silence." 

"  And  what  will  '  it,'  as  you  call  it,  be?  " 

"  Isn't  that  what  we  want  really  to  see  ?  " 

"  Well,"  I  replied  after  a  turn  or  two  about,  "  wheth 
er  we  want  it  or  not,  it's  exactly  what  we  shall  see; 
which  is  a  reason  the  more  for  fancying,  between  the 
pair  there — in  the  quiet,  exquisite  house,  and  full  of 
superiorities  and  suppressions  as  they  both  are — the 
extraordinary  situation.  If  I  said  just  now  that  it's 
too  late  to  do  anything  but  accept,  it's  because  I've 
taken  the  full  measure  of  what  happened  at  my  studio. 
It  took  but  a  few  moments — but  she  tasted  of  the  tree." 

My  companion  wondered.     "  Nina  ?  " 

"  Mrs.  Brash."  And  to  have  to  put  it  so  ministered, 
while  I  took  yet  another  turn,  to  a  sort  of  agitation. 
Our  attitude  was  a  responsibility. 

But  I  had  suggested  something  else  to  my  friend, 
who  appeared  for  a  moment  detached.  "  Should  you 
say  she'll  hate  her  worse  if  she  doesn't  see?  " 

"  Lady  Beldonald  ?  Doesn't  see  what  we  see,  you 
mean,  than  if  she  does?  Ah,  I  give  that  up!"  I 
laughed.  "  But  what  I  can  tell  you  is  why  I  hold  that, 
as  I  said  just  now,  we  can  do  most.  We  can  do  this : 
we  can  give  to  a  harmless  and  sensitive  creature  hither 
to  practically  disinherited — and  give  with  an  unex 
pectedness  that  will  immensely  add  to  its  price — the 
pure  joy  of  a  deep  draught  of  the  very  pride  of  life, 
of  an  acclaimed  personal  triumph  in  our  superior, 
sophisticated  world." 

Mrs.  Munden  had  a  glow  of  response  for  my  sud 
den  eloquence.  "  Oh,  it  will  be  beautiful!  " 


43 


THE   BETTER   SORT 


WELL,  that  is  what,  on  the  whole,  and  in  spite  of 
everything,  it  really  was.  It  has  dropped  into  my 
memory  a  rich  little  gallery  of  pictures,  a  regular  pan 
orama  of  those  occasions  that  were  the  proof  of  the 
privilege  that  had  made  me  for  a  moment — in  the 
words  I  have  just  recorded — lyrical.  I  see  Mrs.  Brash 
on  each  of  these  occasions  practically  enthroned  and 
surrounded  and  more  or  less  mobbed ;  see  the  hurrying 
and  the  nudging  and  the  pressing  and  the  staring ;  see 
the  people  "  making  up  "  and  introduced,  and  catch 
the  word  when  they  have  had  their  turn ;  hear  it  above 
all,  the  great  one — "  Ah  yes,  the  famous  Holbein !  " — 
passed  about  with  that  perfection  of  promptitude  that 
makes  the  motions  of  the  London  mind  so  happy  a 
mixture  of  those  of  the  parrot  and  the  sheep.  Noth 
ing  would  be  easier,  of  course,  than  to  tell  the  whole 
little  tale  with  an  eye  only  for  that  silly  side  of  it. 
Great  was  the  silliness,  but  great  also  as  to  this  case 
of  poor  Mrs.  Brash,  I  will  say  for  it,  the  good  nature. 
Of  course,  furthermore,  it  took  in  particular  "  our  set," 
with  its  positive  child-terror  of  the  banal,  to  be  either 
so  foolish  or  so  wise;  though  indeed  I've  never  quite 
known  where  our  set  begins  and  ends,  and  have  had 
to  content  myself  on  this  score  with  the  indication  once 
given  me  by  a  lady  next  whom  I  was  placed  at  dinner : 
"  Oh,  it's  bounded  on  the  north  by  Ibsen  and  on  the 
south  by  Sargent !  "  Mrs.  Brash  never  sat  to  me ;  she 
absolutely  declined ;  and  when  she  declared  that  it  was 
quite  enough  for  her  that  I  had  with  that  fine  precipi 
tation  invited  her,  I  quite  took  this  as  she  meant  it,  for 
before  we  had  gone  very  far  our  understanding,  hers 
and  mine,  was  complete.  Her  attitude  was  as  happy 
as  her  success  was  prodigious.  The  sacrifice  of  the 
portrait  was  a  sacrifice  to  the  true  inwardness  of  Lady 

44 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

Beldonald,  and  did  much,  for  the  time,  I  divined,  tow 
ard  muffling  their  domestic  tension.  All  that  was  thus 
in  her  power  to  say — and  I  heard  of  a  few  cases  of  her 
having  said  it — was  that  she  was  sure  I  would  have 
painted  her  beautifully  if  she  hadn't  prevented  me. 
She  couldn't  even  tell  the  truth,  which  was  that  I  cer 
tainly  would  have  done  so  if  Lady  Beldonald  hadn't; 
and  she  never  could  mention  the  subject  at  all  before 
that  personage.  I  can  only  describe  the  affair,  natur 
ally,  from  the  outside,  and  heaven  forbid  indeed  that 
I  should  try  too  closely  to  reconstruct  the  possible 
strange  intercourse  of  these  good  friends  at  home. 

My  anecdote,  however,  would  lose  half  such  point 
as  it  may  possess  were  I  to  omit  all  mention  of  the 
charming  turn  that  her  ladyship  appeared  gradually 
to  have  found  herself  able  to  give  to  her  deportment. 
She  had  made  it  impossible  I  should  myself  bring  up 
our  old,  our  original  question,  but  there  was  real  dis 
tinction  in  her  manner  of  now  accepting  certain  other 
possibilities.  Let  me  do  her  that  justice ;  her  effort  at 
magnanimity  must  have  been  immense.  There  couldn't 
fail,  of  course,  to  be  ways  in  which  poor  Mrs.  Brash 
paid  for  it.  How  much  she  had  to  pay  we  were,  in 
fact,  soon  enough  to  see ;  and  it  is  my  intimate  convic 
tion  that,  as  a  climax,  her  life  at  last  was  the  price. 
But  while  she  lived,  at  least — and  it  was  with  an  in 
tensity,  for  those  wondrous  weeks,  of  which  she  had 
never  dreamed — Lady  Beldonald  herself  faced  the 
music.  This  is  what  I  mean  by  the  possibilities,  by 
the  sharp  actualities  indeed,  that  she  accepted.  She 
took  our  friend  out,  she  showed  her  at  home,  never 
attempted  to  hide  or  to  betray  her,  played  her  no  trick 
whatever  so  long  as  the  ordeal  lasted.  She  drank  deep, 
on  her  side  too,  of  the  cup — the  cup  that  for  her  own 
lips  could  only  be  bitterness.  There  was,  I  think,  scarce 
a  special  success  of  her  companion's  at  which  she  was 
not  personally  present.  Mrs.  Munden's  theory  of 

45 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

the  silence  in  which  all  this  would  be  muffled  for 
them  was,  none  the  less,  and  in  abundance,  confirmed 
by  our  observations.  The  whole  thing  was  to  be  the 
death  of  one  or  the  other  of  them,  but  they  never  spoke 
of  it  at  tea.  I  remember  even  that  Nina  went  so  far 
as  to  say  to  me  once,  looking  me  full  in  the  eyes,  quite 
sublimely,  "I've  made  out  what  you  mean — she  is  a 
picture."  The  beauty  of  this,  moreover,  was  that,  as 
I  am  persuaded,  she  hadn't  really  made  it  out  at  all — 
the  words  were  the  mere  hypocrisy  of  her  reflective 
endeavour  for  virtue.  She  couldn't  possibly  have  made 
it  out ;  her  friend  was  as  much  as  ever  "  dreadfully 
plain  "  to  her ;  she  must  have  wondered  to  the  last  what 
on  earth  possessed  us.  Wouldn't  it  in  fact  have  been, 
after  all,  just  this  failure  of  vision,  this  supreme  stu 
pidity  in  short,  that  kept  the  catastrophe  so  long  at 
bay?  There  was  a  certain  sense  of  greatness  for  her 
in  seeing  so  many  of  us  so  absurdly  mistaken;  and  I 
recall  that  on  various  occasions,  and  in  particular  when 
she  uttered  the  words  just  quoted,  this  high  serenity, 
as  a  sign  of  the  relief  of  her  soreness,  if  not  of  the 
effort  of  her  conscience,  did  something  quite  visible 
to  my  eyes,  and  also  quite  unprecedented,  for  the  beauty 
of  her  face.  She  got  a  real  lift  from  it — such  a  mo 
mentary  discernible  sublimity  that  I  recollect  coming 
out  on  the  spot  with  a  queer,  crude,  amused  "  Do  you 
know  I  believe  I  could  paint  you  now?  ' 

She  was  a  fool  not  to  have  closed  with  me  then  and 
there ;  for  what  has  happened  since  has  altered  every 
thing — what  was  to  happen  a  little  later  was  so  much 
more  than  I  could  swallow.  This  was  the  disappear 
ance  of  the  famous  Holbein  from  one  day  to  the  other 
— producing  a  consternation  among  us  all  as  great  as 
if  the  Venus  of  Milo  had  suddenly  vanished  from  the 
Louvre.  "  She  has  simply  shipped  her  straight  back  " 
— the  explanation  was  given  in  that  form  by  Mrs. 
Munden,  who  added  that  any  cord  pulled  tight  enough 

46 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

would  end  at  last  by  snapping.  At  the  snap,  in  any 
case,  we  mightily  jumped,  for  the  masterpiece  we  had 
for  three  or  four  months  been  living  with  had  made  us 
feel  its  presence  as  a  luminous  lesson  and  a  daily  need. 
We  recognised  more  than  ever  that  it  had  been,  for 
high  finish,  the  gem  of  our  collection — we  found  what 
a  blank  it  left  on  the  wall.  Lady  Beldonald  might  fill 
up  the  blank,  but  we  couldn't.  That  she  did  soon  fill 
it  up — and,  heaven  help  us,  how? — was  put  before  me 
after  an  interval  of  no  great  length,  but  during  which 
I  had  not  seen  her.  I  dined  on  the  Christmas  of  last 
year  at  Mrs.  Munden's,  and  Nina,  with  a  "  scratch  lot," 
as  our  hostess  said,  was  there,  and,  the  preliminary 
wait  being  longish,  approached  me  very  sweetly.  "  I'll 
come  to  you  to-morrow  if  you  like,"  she  said;  and  the 
effect  of  it,  after  a  first  stare  at  her,  was  to  make  me 
look  all  round.  I  took  in,  in  these  two  motions,  two 
things;  one  of  which  was  that,  though  now  again  so 
satisfied  herself  of  her  high  state,  she  could  give  me 
nothing  comparable  to  what  I  should  have  got  had 
she  taken  me  up  at  the  moment  of  my  meeting  her  on 
her  distinguished  concession;  the  other  that  she  was 
"  suited  "  afresh,  and  that  Mrs.  Brash's  successor  was 
fully  installed.  Mrs.  Brash's  successor  was  at  the  other 
side  of  the  room,  and  I  became  conscious  that  Mrs. 
Munden  was  waiting  to  see  my  eyes  seek  her.  I  guessed 
the  meaning  of  the  wait;  what  was  one,  this  time,  to 
say?  Oh,  first  and  foremost,  assuredly,  that  it  was 
immensely  droll,  for  this  time,  at  least,  there  was  no 
mistake.  The  lady  I  looked  upon,  and  as  to  whom 
my  friend,  again  quite  at  sea,  appealed  to  me  for  a 
formula,  was  as  little  a  Holbein,  or  a  specimen  of  any 
other  school,  as  she  was,  like  Lady  Beldonald  herself, 
a  Titian.  The  formula  was  easy  to  give,  for  the 
amusement  was  that  her  prettiness — yes,  literally,  pro 
digiously,  her  prettiness — was  distinct.  Lady  Beldon 
ald  had  been  magnificent — had  been  almost  intelligent. 

47 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

Miss  What's-her-name  continues  pretty,  continues  even 
young,  and  doesn't  matter  a  straw!  She  matters  so 
ideally  little  that  Lady  Beldonald  is  practically  safer, 
I  judge,  than  she  has  ever  been.  There  has  not  been 
a  symptom  of  chatter  about  this  person,  and  I  believe 
her  protectress  is  much  surprised  that  we  are  not  more 
struck. 

It  was,  at  any  rate,  strictly  impossible  to  me  to  make 
an  appointment  for  the  day  as  to  which  I  have  just  re 
corded  Nina's  proposal;  and  the  turn  of  events  since 
then  has  not  quickened  my  eagerness.  Mrs.  Munden 
remained  in  correspondence  Xvith  Mrs.  Brash — to  the 
extent,  that  is,  of  three  letters,  each  of  which  she 
showed  me.  They  so  told,  to  our  imagination,  her  ter 
rible  little  story  that  we  were  quite  prepared — or 
thought  we  were — for  her  going  out  like  a  snuffed 
candle.  She  resisted,  on  her  return  to  her  original 
conditions,  less  than  a  year;  the  taste  of  the  tree,  as 
I  had  called  it,  had  been  fatal  to  her;  what  she  had 
contentedly  enough  lived  without  before  for  half  a 
century  she  couldn't  now  live  without  for  a  day.  I 
know  nothing  of  her  original  conditions — some  minor 
American  city — save  that  for  her  to  have  gone  back 
to  them  was  clearly  to  have  stepped  out  of  her  frame. 
We  performed,  Mrs.  Munden  and  I,  a  small  funeral 
service  for  her  by  talking  it  all  over  and  making  it 
all  out.  It  wasn't — the  minor  American  city-^-a  mar 
ket  for  Holbeins,  and  what  had  occurred  was  that  the 
poor  old  picture,  banished  from  its  museum  and  re 
freshed  by  the  rise  of  no  new  movement  to  hang  it, 
was  capable  of  the  miracle  of  a  silent  revolution,  of 
itself  turning,  in  its  dire  dishonour,  its  face  to  the  wall. 
So  it  stood,  without  the  intervention  of  the  ghost  of  a 
critic,  till  they  happened  to  pull  it  round  again  and 
find  it  mere  dead  paint.  Well,  it  had  had,  if  that  is 
anything,  its  season  of  fame,  its  name  on  a  thousand 
tongues  and  printed  in  capitals  in  the  catalogue.  We 

48 


THE   BELDONALD   HOLBEIN 

had  not  been  at  fault.  I  haven't,  all  the  same,  the  least 
note  of  her — not  a  scratch.  And  I  did  her  so  in  inten 
tion  !  Mrs.  Munden  continues  to  remind  me,  however, 
that  this  is  not  the  sort  of  rendering  with  which,  on  the 
other  side,  after  all,  Lady  Beldonald  proposes  to  con 
tent  herself.  She  has  come  back  to  the  question  of  her 
own  portrait.  Let  me  settle  it  then  at  last.  Since  she 
will  have  the  real  thing — well,  hang  it,  she  shall ! 


THE   TWO   FACES 


THE  servant,  who,  in  spite  of  his  sealed,  stamped 
look,  appeared  to  have  his  reasons,  stood  there 
for  instruction,  in  a  manner  not  quite  usual,  after  an 
nouncing  the  name.  Mrs.  Grantham,  however,  took 
it  up — "  Lord  Gwyther?  "  —  with  a  quick  surprise  that 
for  an  instant  justified  him  even  to  the  small  scintilla 
in  the  glance  she  gave  her  companion,  which  might 
have  had  exactly  the  sense  of  the  butler's  hesitation. 
This  companion,  a  shortish,  fairish,  youngish  man, 
clean-shaven  and  keen-eyed,  had,  with  a  promptitude 
that  would  have  struck  an  observer — which  the  butler 
indeed  was — sprang  to  his  feet  and  moved  to  the  chim 
ney-piece,  though  his  hostess  herself,  meanwhile,  man 
aged  not  otherwise  to  stir.  "  Well  ?  "  she  said,  as  for 
the  visitor  to  advance ;  which  she  immediately  followed 
with  a  sharper  "  He's  not  there  ?  " 

"  Shall  I  show  him  up,  ma'am  ?  " 

"  But  of  course !  "  The  point  of  his  doubt  made 
her  at  last  rise  for  impatience,  and  Bates,  before  leav 
ing  the  room,  might  still  have  caught  the  achieved 
irony  of  her  appeal  to  the  gentleman  into  whose  com 
munion  with  her  he  had  broken.  "  Why  in  the  world 

not ?    What  a  way !  "  she  exclaimed,  as  Sut- 

ton  felt  beside  his  cheek  the  passage  of  her  eyes  to 
the  glass  behind  him. 

"  He  wasn't  sure  you'd  see  anyone." 

"  I  don't  see  '  anyone,'  but  I  see  individuals." 

50 


THE   TWO   FACES 

'  That's  just  it ;  and  sometimes  you  don't  see  them." 

"  Do  you  mean  ever  because  of  you?  "  she  asked  as 
she  touched  into  place  a  tendril  of  hair.  "  That's  just 
his  impertinence,  as  to  which  I  shall  speak  to  him." 

"  Don't,"  said  Shirley  Sutton.  "  Never  notice  any 
thing." 

'  That's  nice  advice  from  you,"  she  laughed,  "  who 
notice  everything !  " 

"  Ah,  but  I  speak  of  nothing." 

She  looked  at  him  a  moment.  "  You're  still  more 
impertinent  than  Bates.  You'll  please  not  budge,"  she 
went  on. 

"Really?  I  must  sit  him  out?"  he  continued  as, 
after  a  minute,  she  had  not  again  spoken — only  glanc 
ing  about,  while  she  changed  her  place,  partly  for  an 
other  look  at  the  glass  and  partly  to  see  if  she  could 
improve  her  seat.  What  she  felt  was  rather  more  than, 
clever  and  charming  though  she  was,  she  could  hide. 
"  If  you're  wondering  how  you  seem,  I  can  tell  you. 
Awfully  cool  and  easy." 

She  gave  him  another  stare.  She  was  beautiful  and 
conscious.  "  And  if  you're  wondering  how  you 
seem " 

"Oh,  I'm  not!"  he  laughed  from  before  the  fire; 
"  I  always  perfectly  know." 

"  How  you  seem,"  she  retorted,  "  is  as  if  you 
didn't!" 

Once  more  for  a  little  he  watched  her.  "  You're 
looking  lovely  for  him — extraordinarily  lovely,  within 
the  marked  limits  of  your  range.  But  that's  enough. 
Don't  be  clever." 

"Then  who  will  be?" 

"  There  you  are!  "  he  sighed  with  amusement. 

"  Do  you  know  him  ?  "  she  asked  as,  through  the 
door  left  open  by  Bates,  they  heard  steps  on  the  land 
ing. 

Sutton  had  to  think  an  instant,  and  produced  a 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  No  "  just  as  Lord  Gwyther  was  again  announced, 
which  gave  an  unexpectedness  to  the  greeting  offered 
him  a  moment  later  by  this  personage — a  young  man, 
stout  and  smooth  and  fresh,  but  not  at  all  shy,  who, 
after  the  happiest  rapid  passage  with  Mrs.  Grantham, 
put  out  a  hand  with  a  frank,  pleasant  "  How  d'ye  do  ?  " 

"  Mr.  Shirley  Sutton,"  Mrs.  Grantham  explained. 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  her  second  visitor,  quite  as  if  he 
knew ;  which,  as  he  couldn't  have  known,  had  for  her 
first  the  interest  of  confirming  a  perception  that  his 
lordship  would  be — no,  not  at  all,  in  general,  em- 
,barrassed,  only  was  now  exceptionally  and  especially 
agitated.  As  it  is,  for  that  matter,  with  Button's  total 
impression  that  we  are  particularly  and  almost  exclu 
sively  concerned,  it  may  be  further  mentioned  that  he 
was  not  less  clear  as  to  the  really  handsome  way  in 
which  the  young  man  kept  himself  together  and  little 
by  little — though  with  all  proper  aid  indeed — finally 
found  his  feet.  All  sorts  of  things,  for  the  twenty 
minutes,  occurred  to  Sutton,  though  one  of  them  was 
certainly  not  that  it  would,  after  all,  be  better  he  should 
go.  One  of  them  was  that  their  hostess  was  doing 
it  in  perfection — simply,  easily,  kindly,  yet  with  some 
thing  the  least  bit  queer  in  her  wonderful  eyes;  an 
other  was  that  if  he  had  been  recognised  without  the 
least  ground  it  was  through  a  tension  of  nerves  on  the 
part  of  his  fellow-guest  that  produced  inconsequent 
motions;  still  another  was  that,  even  had  departure 
been  indicated,  he  would  positively  have  felt  dissuasion 
in  the  rare  promise  of  the  scene.  This  was  in  especial 
after  Lord  Gwyther  not  only  had  announced  that  he 
was  now  married,  but  had  mentioned  that  he  wished 
to  bring  his  wife  to  Mrs.  Grantham  for  the  benefit  so 
certain  to  be  derived.  It  was  the  passage  immediately 
produced  by  that  speech  that  provoked  in  Sutton  the 
intensity,  as  it  were,  of  his  arrest.  He  already  knew 
of  the  marriage  as  well  as  Mrs.  Grantham  herself,  and 

52 


THE   TWO   FACES 

as  well  also  as  he  knew  of  some  other  things ;  and  this 
gave  him,  doubtless,  the  better  measure  of  what  took 
place  before  him  and  the  keener  consciousness  of  the 
quick  look  that,  at  a  marked  moment — though  it  was 
not  absolutely  meant  for  him  any  more  than  for  his 
companion — Mrs.  Grantham  let  him  catch. 

She  smiled,  but  it  had  a  gravity.  "  I  think,  you 
know,  you  ought  to  have  told  me  before." 

"  Do  you  mean  when  I  first  got  engaged?  Well,  it 
all  took  place  so  far  away,  and  we  really  told,  at  home, 
so  few  people." 

Oh,  there  might  have  been  reasons;  but  it  had  not 
been  quite  right.  "  You  were  married  at  Stuttgart  ? 
That  wasn't  too  far  for  my  interest,  at  least,  to  reach." 

"  Awfully  kind  of  you — and  of  course  one  knew  you 
would  be  kind.  But  it  wasn't  at  Stuttgart ;  it  was  over 
there,  but  quite  in  the  country.  We  should  have  man 
aged  it  in  England  but  that  her  mother  naturally 
wished  to  be  present,  yet  was  not  in  health  to  come. 
So  it  was  really,  you  see,  a  sort  of  little  hole-and-corner 
German  affair." 

This  didn't  in  the  least  check  Mrs.  Grantham's  claim, 
but  it  started  a  slight  anxiety.  "  Will  she  be — a,  then, 
German  ?  " 

Sutton  knew  her  to  know  perfectly  what  Lady, 
Gwyther  would  "  be,"  but  he  had  by  this  time,  while 
their  friend  explained,  his  independent  interest.  "  Oh 
dear,  no !  My  father-in-law  has  never  parted  with  the 
proud  birthright  of  a  Briton.  But  his  wife,  you  see, 
holds  an  estate  in  Wurtemberg  from  her  mother, 
Countess  Kremnitz,  on  which,  with  the  awful  condi 
tion  of  his  English  property,  you  know,  they've  found 
it  for  years  a  tremendous  saving  to  live.  So  that 
though  Valda  was  luckily  born  at  home  she  has  prac 
tically  spent  her  life  over  there." 

"  Oh,  "I  see."  Then,  after  a  slight  pause,  "  Is  Valda 
her  pretty  name?  "  Mrs.  Grantham  asked. 

53 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Well,"  said  the  young  man,  only  wishing,  in  his 
candour,  it  was  clear,  to  be  drawn  out — "  well,  she  has, 
in  the  manner  of  her  mother's  people,  about  thirteen; 
but  that's  the  one  we  generally  use." 

Mrs.  Grantham  hesitated  but  an  instant.  "  Then  may 
/  generally  use  it?  " 

"  It  would  be  too  charming  of  you ;  and  nothing 
would  give  her — as,  I  assure  you,  nothing  would  give 
me,  greater  pleasure."  Lord  Gwyther  quite  glowed 
with  the  thought. 

"  Then  I  think  that  instead  of  coming  alone  you 
might  have  brought  her  to  see  me." 

"  It's  exactly  what,"  he  instantly  replied,  "  I  came 
to  ask  your  leave  to  do."  He  explained  that  for  the 
moment  Lady  Gwyther  was  not  in  town,  having  as 
soon  as  she  arrived  gone  down  to  Torquay  to  put  in 
a  few  days  with  one  of  her  aunts,  also  her  godmother, 
to  whom  she  was  an  object  of  great  interest.  She  had 
seen  no  one  yet,  and  no  one — not  that  that  mattered 
— had  seen  her;  she  knew  nothing  whatever  of  Lon 
don  and  was  awfully  frightened  at  facing  it  and  at 
what — however  little — might  be  expected  of  her. 
"  She  wants  some  one,"  he  said,  "  some  one  who  knows 
the  whole  thing,  don't  you  see  ?  and  who's  thoroughly 
kind  and  clever,  as  you  would  be,  if  I  may  say  so,  to 
take  her  by  the  hand."  It  was  at  this  point  and  on 
these  words  that  the  eyes  of  Lord  Gwyther's  two  audi 
tors  inevitably  and  wonderfully  met.  But  there  was 
nothing  in  the  way  he  kept  it  up  to  show  that  he 
caught  the  encounter.  "  She  wants,  if  I  may  tell  you 
so,  for  the  great  labyrinth,  a  real  friend;  and  asking 
myself  what  I  could  do  to  make  things  ready  for  her, 
and  who  would  be  absolutely  the  best  woman  in  Lon 
don " 

"  You  thought,  naturally,  of  me?  "  Mrs.  Grantham 
had  listened  with  no  sign  but  the  faint  flash  just  noted ; 
now,  however,  she  gave  him  the  full  light  of  her  ex- 

54 


THE   TWO   FACES 

pressive  face — which  immediately  brought  Shirley  Sut- 
ton,  looking  at  his  watch,  once  more  to  his  feet. 

"  She  is  the  best  woman  in  London !  "    He  addressed 
himself  with  a  laugh  to  the  other  visitor,  but  offered 
his  hand  in  farewell  to  their  hostess. 
'You're  going?" 

"  I  must,"  he  said  without  scruple. 

"  Then  we  do  meet  at  dinner  ?  " 

"  I  hope  so."  On  which,  to  take  leave,  he  returned 
with  interest  to  Lord  Gwyther  the  friendly  clutch  he 
had  a  short  time  before  received. 


II 

THEY  did  meet  at  dinner,  and  if  they  were  not,  as  it 
happened,  side  by  side,  they  made  that  up  afterwards 
in  the  happiest  angle  of  a  drawing-room  that  offered 
both  shine  and  shadow  and  that  was  positively  much 
appreciated,  in  the  circle  in  which  they  moved,  for  the 
favourable  "  corners  "  created  by  its  shrewd  mistress. 
Her  face,  charged  with  something  produced  in  it  by 
Lord  Gwyther's  visit,  had  been  with  him  so  constantly 
for  the  previous  hours  that,  when  she  instantly  chal 
lenged  him  on  his  "  treatment  "  of  her  in  the  after 
noon,  he  was  on  the  point  of  naming  it  as  his  reason 
for  not  having  remained  with  her.  Something  new 
had  quickly  come  into  her  beauty;  he  couldn't  as  yet 
have  said  what,  nor  whether  on  the  whole  to  its  ad 
vantage  or  its  loss.  Till  he  could  make  up  his  mind 
about  that,  at  any  rate,  he  would  say  nothing ;  so  that, 
with  sufficient  presence  of  mind,  he  found  a  better  ex 
cuse.  If  in  short  he  had  in  defiance  of  her  particular 
request  left  her  alone  with  Lord  Gwyther,  it  was  sim 
ply  because  the  situation  had  suddenly  turned  so  ex 
citing  that  he  had  fairly  feared  the  contagion  of  it — 
the  temptation  of  its  making  him,  most  improperly, 
put  in  his  word. 

55 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

They  could  now  talk  of  these  things  at  their  ease. 
Other  couples,  ensconced  and  scattered,  enjoyed  the 
same  privilege,  and  Sutton  had  more  and  more  the 
profit,  such  as  it  was,  of  feeling  that  his  interest  in 
Mrs.  Grantham  had  become — what  was  the  luxury  of 
so  high  a  social  code — an  acknowledged  and  protected 
relation.  He  knew  his  London  well  enough  to  know 
that  he  was  on  the  way  to  be  regarded  as  her  main 
source  of  consolation  for  the  trick  that,  several  months 
before,  Lord  Gwyther  had  publicly  played  her.  Many 
persons  had  not  held  that,  by  the  high  social  code  in 
question,  his  lordship  could  have  "  reserved  the  right " 
to  turn  up  in  that  way,  from  one  day  to  another,  en 
gaged.  For  himself  London  took,  with  its  short  cuts 
and  its  cheap  psychology,  an  immense  deal  for  granted. 
To  his  own  sense  he  was  never — could  in  the  nature 
of  things  never  be — any  man's  "  successor."  Just 
what  had  constituted  the  predecessorship  of  other  men 
was  apparently  that  they  had  been  able  to  make  up 
their  mind.  He,  worse  luck,  was  at  the  mercy  of  her 
face,  and  more  than  ever  at  the  mercy  of  it  now,  which 
meant,  moreover,  not  that  it  made  a  slave  of  him,  but 
that  it  made,  disconcertingly,  a  sceptic.  It  was  the  ab 
solute  perfection  of  the  handsome;  but  things  had  a 
way  of  coming  into  it.  "  I  felt,"  he  said,  "  that  you 
were  there  together  at  a  point  at  which  you  had  a 
right  to  the  ease  that  the  absence  of  a  listener  would 
give.  I  reflected  that  when  you  made  me  promise  to 
stay  you  hadn't  guessed " 

''  That  he  could  possibly  have  come  to  me  on  such 
an  extraordinary  errand?  No,  of  course,  I  hadn't 
guessed.  Who  would ?  But  didn't  you  see  how  little 
I  was  upset  by  it  ?  " 

Sutton  demurred.  Then  with  a  smile,  "  I  think  he 
saw  how  little." 

"  You  yourself  didn't,  then?  " 

He  again  held  back,  but  not,  after  all,  to  answer. 
"  He  was  wonderful,  wasn't  he?  " 

56 


THE   TWO   FACES 

"  I  think  he  was,"  she  replied  after  a  moment.  To 
which  she  added :  "  Why  did  he  pretend  that  way  he 
knew  you  ?  " 

"  He  didn't  pretend.  He  felt  on  the  spot  as  if  we 
were  friends."  Sutton  had  found  this  afterwards,  and 
found  truth  in  it.  "  It  was  an  effusion  of  cheer  and 
hope.  He  was  so  glad  to  see  me  there,  and  to  find  you 
happy." 

"Happy?" 

"  Happy.    Aren't  you  ?  " 

"  Because  of  you?  " 

''  Well — according  to  the  impression  he  received  as 
he  came  in." 

"  That  was  sudden  then,"  she  asked,  "  and  unex 
pected?" 

Her  companion  thought.  "  Prepared  in  some  de 
gree,  but  confirmed  by  the  sight  of  us,  there  together, 
so  awfully  jolly  and  sociable  over  your  fire." 

Mrs.  Grantham  turned  this  round.  "  If  he  kne\*7  I 
was  '  happy  '  then — which,  by  the  way,  is  none  of  his 
business,  nor  of  yours  either — why  in  the  world  did 
he  come?  " 

"  Well,  for  good  manners,  and  for  his  idea,"  said 
Sutton. 

She  took  it  in,  appearing  to  have  no  hardness  of 
rancour  that  could  bar  discussion.  "  Do  you  mean  by 
his  idea  his  proposal  that  I  should  grandmother  his 
wife?  And,  if  you  do,  is  the  proposal  your  reason  for 
calling  him  wonderful  ?  " 

Sutton  laughed.  "Pray,  what's  yours?"  As  this 
was  a  question,  however,  that  she  took  her  time  to 
answer  or  not  to  answer — only  appearing  interested 
for  a  moment  in  a  combination  that  had  formed  itself 
on  the  other  side  of  the  room — he  presently  went  on. 
"  What's  his? — that  would  seem  to  be  the  point.  His, 
I  mean,  for  having  decided  on  the  extraordinary  step 
of  throwing  his  little  wife,  bound  hands  and  feet,  into 

57. 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

your  arms.  Intelligent  as  you  are,  and  with  these  three 
or  four  hours  to  have  thought  it  over,  I  yet  don't  see 
how  that  can  fail  still  to  mystify  you." 

She  continued  to  watch  their  opposite  neighbours. 
"  '  Little,'  you  call  her.  Is  she  so  very  small?  " 

"  Tiny,  tiny — she  must  be ;  as  different  as  possible 
in  every  way — of  necessity — from  you.  They  always 
are  the  opposite  pole,  you  know,"  said  Shirley  Sutton. 

She  glanced  at  him  now.  "  You  strike  me  as  of  an 
impudence !  " 

"  No,  no.    I  only  like  to  make  it  out  with  you." 

She  looked  away  again  and,  after  a  little,  went  on. 
"  I'm  sure  she's  charming,  and  only  hope  one  isn't  to 
gather  that  he's  already  tired  of  her." 

"  Not  a  bit !     He's  tremendously  in  love,  and  he'll 


remain  so." 


"  So  much  the  better.  And  if  it's  a  question,"  said 
Mrs.  Grantham,  "  of  one's  doing  what  one  can  for  her, 
he  has  only,  as  I  told  him  when  you  had  gone,  to  give 
me  the  chance." 

"  Good !    So  he  is  to  commit  her  to  you  ?  " 

"  You  use  extraordinary  expressions,  but  it's  settled 
that  he  brings  her." 

"And  you'll  really  and  truly  help  her?" 

"  Really  and  truly  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Grantham,  with  her 
eyes  again  upon  him.  "  Why  not  ?  For  what  do  you 
take  me?" 

"  Ah,  isn't  that  just  what  I  still  have  the  discomfort, 
j  every  day  I  live,  of  asking  myself  ?  " 

She  had  made,  as  she  spoke,  a  movement  to  rise, 
which,  as  if  she  was  tired  of  his  tone,  his  last  words 
J  appeared  to  determine.  But,  also  getting  up,  he  held 
her,  when  they  were  on  their  feet,  long  enough  to  hear 
the  rest  of  what  he  had  to  say.  "If  you  do  help  her, 
you  know,  you'll  show  him  that  you've  understood." 

"Understood  what?" 

"  Why,  his  idea — the  deep,  acute  train  of  reasoning 

58 


THE   TWO   FACES 

that  has  led  him  to  take,  as  one  may  say,  the  bull  by 
the  horns ;  to  reflect  that  as  you  might,  as  you  probably 
would,  in  any  case,  get  at  her,  he  plays  the  wise  game, 
as  well  as  the  bold  one,  by  assuming  your  generosity 
and  placing  himself  publicly  under  an  obligation  to 
you/' 

Mi;s.  Grantham  showed  not  only  that  she  had  list 
ened,  but  that  she  had  for  an  instant  considered. 
"  What  is  it  you  elegantly  describe  as  my  getting  '  at ' 
her?" 

"  He  takes  his  risk,  but  puts  you,  you  see,  on  your 
honour." 

She  thought  a  moment  more.  "  What  profundities 
indeed  then  over  the  simplest  of  matters !  And  if  your 
idea  is,"  she  went  on,  "  that  if  I  do  help  her  I  shall 
show  him  I've  understood  them,  so  it  will  be  that  if  I 
don't- 

"  You'll  show  him  " — Sutton  took  her  up — "  that 
you  haven't?  Precisely.  But  in  spite  of  not  wanting 
to  appear  to  have  understood  too  much ' 

"I  may  still  be  depended  on  to  do  what  I  can? 
Quite  certainly.  You'll  see  what  I  may  still  be  depend 
ed  on  to  do."  And  she  moved  away. 

Ill 

IT  was  not,  doubtless,  that  there  had  been  anything  in 
their  rather  sharp  separation  at  that  moment  to  sustain 
or  prolong  the  interruption ;  yet  it  definitely  befell  that, 
circumstances  aiding,  they  practically  failed  to  meet 
again  before  the  great  party  at  Burbeck.  This  occasion 
wa&  to  gather  in  some  thirty  persons  from  a  certain 
Friday  to  the  following  Monday,  and  it  was  on  the 
Friday  that  Sutton  went  down.  He  had  known  in  ad 
vance  that  Mrs.  Grantham  was  to  be  there,  and  this 
perhaps,  during  the  interval  of  hindrance,  had  helped 
him  a  little  to  be  patient.  He  had  before  him  the  cer- 

59 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

titude  of  a  real  full  cup — two  days  brimming  over  with 
the  sight  of  her.  He  found,  however,  on  his  arrival 
that  she  was  not  yet  in  the  field,  and  presently  learned 
that  her  place  would  be  in  a  small  contingent  that  was 
to  join  the  party  on  the  morrow.  This  knowledge  he 
extracted  from  Miss  Banker,  who  was  always  the  first 
to  present  herself  at  any  gathering  that  was  to  enjoy 
her,  and  whom,  moreover — partly  on  that  very  account 
— the  wary  not  less  than  the  speculative  wrere  apt  to 
hold  themselves  well-advised  to  engage  with  at  as  early 
as  possible  a  stage  of  the  business.  She  was  stout, 
red,  rich,  mature,  universal — a  massive,  much-fingered 
volume,  alphabetical,  wonderful,  indexed,  that  opened 
of  itself  at  the  right  place.  She  opened  for  Sutton 
instinctively  at  G ,  which  happened  to  be  remark 
ably  convenient.  "  What  she's  really  waiting  over  for 
is  to  bring  down  Lady  Gwyther." 

"  Ah,  the  Gwythers  are  coming?  " 

"  Yes ;  caught,  through  Mrs.  Grantham,  just  in  time. 
She'll  be  the  feature — everyone  wants  to  see  her." 

Speculation  and  wariness  met  and  combined  at  this 
moment  in  Shirley  Sutton.  "  Do  you  mean — a — Mrs. 
Grantham  ?  " 

"  Dear  no !  Poor  little  Lady  Gwyther,  who,  but 
just  arrived  in  England,  appears  now  literally  for  the 
first  time  in  her  life  in  any  society  whatever,  and  whom 
(don't  you  know  the  extraordinary  story?  you  ought 
to — you!)  she,  of  all  people,  has  so  wonderfully  taken 
up.  It  will  be  quite — here — as  if  she  were  i  present 
ing  '  her." 

Sutton,  of  course,  took  in  more  things  than  even 
appeared.  "  I  never  know  what  I  ought  to  know ;  I 
only  know,  inveterately,  what  I  oughtn't.  So  what  is 
the  extraordinary  story  ?  " 

"  You  really  haven't  heard ?  " 

"  Really,"  he  replied  without  winking. 

"  It  happened,  indeed,  but  the  other  day,"  said  Miss 

60 


THE   TWO   FACES 

Banker,  "  yet  everyone  is  already  wondering.  Gwyther 
has  thrown  his  wife  on  her  mercy — but  I  won't  believe 
you  if  y©u  pretend  to  me  you  don't  know  why  he 
shouldn't." 

Sutton  asked  himself  then  what  he  could  pretend. 
"  Do  you  mean  because  she's  merciless  ?  " 

She  hesitated.  "  If  you  don't  know,  perhaps  I 
oughtn't  to  tell  you." 

He  liked  Miss  Banker,  and  found  just  the  right  tone 
to  plead.  "  Do  tell  me." 

"  Well,"  she  sighed,  "  it  will  be  your  own  fault ! 

They  had  been  such  friends  that  there  could  have  been 
but  one  name  for  the  crudity  of  his /original  precede. 
When  I  was  a  girl  we  used  to  call  it  throwing  over. 
They  call  it  in  French  to  lacker.  But  I  refer  not  so 
much  to  the  act  itself  as  to  the  manner  of  it,  though  you 
may  say  indeed,  of  course,  that  there  is  in  such  cases, 
after  all,  only  one  manner.  Least  said,  soonest 
mended." 

Sutton  seemed  to  wonder.  "  Oh,  he  said  too 
much  ?  " 

"  He  said  nothing.    That  was  it." 

Sutton  kept  it  up.    "  But  was  what?  ' 

"  Why,  what  she  must,  like  any  woman  in  her  shoes, 
have  felt  to  be  his  perfidy.  He  simply  went  and  did  it 
— took  to  himself  this  child,  that  is,  without  the  pre 
liminary  of  a  scandal  or  a  rupture — before  she  could 
turn  round." 

"  I  follow  you.  But  it  would  appear  from  what  you 
say  that  she  has  turned  round  now." 

"  Well,"  Miss  Banker  laughed,  "  we  shall  see  for 
ourselves  how  far.  It  will  be  what  everyone  will  try 
to  see." 

"  Oh,  then  we've  work  cut  out !  "  And  Sutton  cer 
tainly  felt  that  he  himself  had — an  impression  that  lost 
nothing  from  a  further  talk  with  Miss  Banker  in  the 
course  of  a  short  stroll  in  the  grounds  with  her  the 

61 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

next  day.    He  spoke  as  one  who  had  now  considered 
many  things. 

"  Did  I  understand  from  you  yesterday  that  Lady 
Gwyther's  a  '  child  '  ?  " 

"  Nobody  knows.  It's  prodigious  the  way  she  has 
managed." 

"  The  way  Lady  Gwyther  has ?  " 

"  No ;  the  way  May  Grantham  has  kept  her  till  this 
hour  in  her  pocket." 

He  was  quick  at  his  watch.  "  Do  you  mean  by  '  this 
hour  '  that  they're  due  now  ?  " 

"  Not  till  tea.  All  the  others  arrive  together  in  time 
for  that."  Miss  Banker  had  clearly,  since  the  previous 
day,  filled  in  gaps  and  become,  as  it  were,  revised  and 
enlarged.  "  She'll  have  kept  a  cat  from  seeing  her, 
so  as  to  produce  her  entirely  herself." 

"  Well,"  Sutton  mused,  "  that  will  have  been  a  very 
noble  sort  of  return " 

"  For  Gwyther's  behaviour  ?  Very.  Yet  I  feel 
creepy." 

"Creepy?" 

"  Because  so  much  depends  for  the  girl — in  the  way 
of  the  right  start  or  the  wrong  start — on  the  signs 
and  omens  of  this  first  appearance.  It's  a  great  house 
and  a  great  occasion,  and  we're  assembled  here,  it 
strikes  me,  very  much  as  the  Roman  mob  at  the  circus 
used  to  be  to  see  the  next  Christian  maiden  brought 
out  to  the  tigers." 

"Oh,  if  she  is  a  Christian  maiden !"   Sutton 

murmured.     But  he  stopped  at  what  his  imagination 
called  up. 

It  perhaps  fed  that  faculty  a  little  that  Miss  Banker 
had  the  effect  of  making  out  that  Mrs.  Grantham  might 
individually  be,  in  any  case,  something  of  a  Roman 
matron.  "  She  has  kept  her  in  the  dark  so  that  we 
may  only  take  her  from  her  hand.  She  will  have 
formed  her  for  us." 

62 


THE   TWO   FACES 

"  In  so  few  days  ?  " 

"  Well,  she  will  have  prepared  her — decked  her  for 
the  sacrifice  with  ribbons  and  flowers." 

"  Ah,  if  you  only  mean  that  she  will  have  taken  her 

to  her  dressmaker !  "  And  it  came  to  Sutton,  at 

once  as  a  new  light  and  as  a  check,  almost,  to  anxiety, 
that  this  was  all  poor  Gwyther,  mistrustful  probably 
of  a  taste  formed  by  Stuttgart,  might  have  desired  of 
their  friend. 

There  were  usually  at  Burbeck  many  things  taking 
place  at  once ;  so  that  wherever  else,  on  such  occasions, 
tea  might  be  served,  it  went  forward  with  matchless 
pomp,  weather  permitting,  on  a  shaded  stretch  of  one 
of  the  terraces  and  in  presence  of  one  of  the  prospects. 
Shirley  Sutton,  moving,  as  the  afternoon  waned,  more 
restlessly  about  and  mingling  in  dispersed  groups  only 
to  find  they  had  nothing  to  keep  him  quiet,  came  upon 
it  as  he  turned  a  corner  of  the  house — saw  it  seated 
there  in  all  its  state.  It  might  be  said  that  at  Burbeck 
it  was,  like  everything  else,  made  the  most  of.  It  con 
stituted  immediately,  with  multiplied  tables  and  glit 
tering  plate,  with  rugs  and  cushions  and  ices  and  fruit 
and  wonderful  porcelain  and  beautiful  women,  a  scene 
of  splendour,  almost  an  incident  of  grand  opera.  One 
of  the  beautiful  women  might  quite  have  been  expected 
to  rise  with  a  gold  cup  and  a  celebrated  song. 

One  of  them  did  rise,  as  it  happened,  while  Sutton 
drew  near,  and  he  found  himself  a  moment  later  seeing 
nothing  and  nobody  but  Mrs.  Grantham.  They  met 
on  the  terrace,  just  away  from  the  others,  and  the 
movement  in  which  he  had  the  effect  of  arresting  her 
might  have  been  that  of  withdrawal.  He  quickly 
saw,  however,  that  if  she  had  been  about  to  pass  into 
the  house  it  was  only  on  some  errand — to  get  some 
thing  or  to  call  someone — that  would  immediately  have 
restored  her  to  the  public.  It  somehow  struck  him 
on  the  spot — and  more  than  ever  yet,  though  the  im- 

63 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

pression  was  not  wholly  new  to  him — that  she  felt 
herself  a  figure  for  the  forefront  of  the  stage  and  in 
deed  would  have  been  recognised  by  anyone  at  a  glance 
as  the  prima  donna  assoluta.  She  caused,  in  fact,  dur 
ing  the  few  minutes  he  stood  talking  to  her,  an  extraor 
dinary  series  of  waves  to  roll  extraordinarily  fast  over 
his  sense,  not  the  least  mark  of  the  matter  being  that 
the  appearance  with  which  it  ended  was  again  the  one 
with  which  it  had  begun.  "  The  face — the  face,"  as 
he  kept  dumbly  repeating ;  that  was  at  last,  as  at  first, 
all  he  could  clearly  see.  She  had  a  perfection  resplen 
dent,  but  what  in  the  world  had  it  done,  this  perfection, 
to  her  beauty?  It  was  her  beauty,  doubtless,  that 
looked  out  at  him,  but  it  was  into  something  else  that, 
as  their  eyes  met,  he  strangely  found  himself  looking. 

It  was  as  if  something  had  happened  in  consequence 
of  which  she  had  changed,  and  there  was  that  in  this 
swift  perception  that  made  him  glance  eagerly  about 
for  Lady  Gwyther.  But  as  he  took  in  the  recruited 
group — identities  of  the  hour  added  to  those  of  the 
previous  twenty-four — he  saw,  among  his  recognitions, 
one  of  which  was  the  husband  of  the  person  missing, 
that  Lady  Gwyther  was  not  there.  Nothing  in  the 
whole  business  was  more  singular  than  his  conscious 
ness  that,  as  he  came  back  to  his  interlocutress  after 
the  nods  and  smiles  and  handwaves  he  had  launched, 
she  knew  what  had  been  his  thought.  She  knew  for 
whom  he  had  looked  without  success ;  but  why  should 
this  knowledge  visibly  have  hardened  and  sharpened 
her,  and  precisely  at  a  moment  when  she  was  unprece- 
dentedly  magnificent?  The  indefinable  apprehension 
that  had  somewhat  sunk  after  his  second  talk  with 
Miss  Banker  and  then  had  perversely  risen  again — this 
nameless  anxiety  now  produced  on  him,  with  a  sudden 
sharper  pinch,  the  effect  of  a  great  suspense.  The 
action  of  that,  in  turn,  was  to  show  him  that  he  had 
not  yet  fully  known  how  much  he  had  at  stake  on  a 


THE   TWO   FACES 

final  view.  It  was  revealed  to  him  for  the  first  time 
that  he  "  really  cared  "  whether  Mrs.  Grantham  were 
a  safe  nature.  It  was  too  ridiculous  by  what  a  thread 
it  hung,  but  something  was  certainly  in  the  air  that 
would  definitely  tell  him. 

What  was  in  the  air  descended  the  next  moment  to 
earth.  He  turned  round  as  he  caught  the  expression 
with  which  her  eyes  attached  themselves  to  something 
that  approached.  A  little  person,  very  young  and  very 
much  dressed,  had  come  out  of  the  house,  and  the  ex 
pression  in  Mrs.  Grantham's  eyes  was  that  of  the 
artist  confronted  with  her  work  and  interested,  even  to 
impatience,  in  the  judgment  of  others.  The  little  per 
son  drew  nearer,  and  though  Sutton's  companion,  with 
out  looking  at  him  now,  gave  it  a  name  and  met  it,, 
he  had  jumped  for  himself  at  certitude.  He  saw  many 
things — too  many,  and  they  appeared  to  be  feathers, 
frills,  excrescences  of  silk  and  lace — massed  together 
and  conflicting,  and  after  a  moment  also  saw  strug 
gling  out  of  them  a  small  face  that  struck  him  as  either 
scared  or  sick.  Then,  with  his  eyes  again  returning 
to  Mrs.  Grantham,  he  saw  another. 

He  had  no  more  talk  with  Miss  Banker  till  late  that 
evening — an  evening  during  which  he  had  felt  himself 
too  noticeably  silent;  but  something  had  passed  be 
tween  this  pair,  across  dinner-table  and  drawing-room, 
without  speech,  and  when  they  at  last  found  words  it 
was  in  the  needed  ease  of  a  quiet  end  of  the  long, 
lighted  gallery,  where  she  opened  again  at  the  very  par 
agraph. 

"  You  were  right — that  was  it.  She  did  the  only 
thing  that,  at  such  short  notice,  she  could  do.  She 
took  her  to  her  dressmaker." 

Sutton,  with  his  back  to  the  reach  of  the  gallery,  had, 
as  if  to  banish  a  vision,  buried  his  eyes  for  a  minute 
in  his  hands.  "  And  oh,  the  face — the  face!  " 

"  Which?  "  Miss  Banker  asked. 

65 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

"  Whichever  one  looks  at." 

"  But  May  Grantham's  glorious.  She  has  turned 
herself  out -" 

"  With  a  splendour  of  taste  and  a  sense  of  effect,  eh  ? 
"  Yes."  Sutton  showed  he  saw  far. 

"  She  has  the  sense  of  effect.  The  sense  of  effect  as 
exhibited  in  Lady  Gwyther's  clothes !  "  was  some 
thing  Miss  Banker  failed  of  words  to  express.  "  Every 
body's  overwhelmed.  Here,  you  know,  that  sort  of 
thing's  grave.  The  poor  creature's  lost." 

"Lost?" 

"  Since  on  the  first  impression,  as  we  said,  so  much 
depends.  The  first  impression's  made — oh,  made!  I 
defy  her  now  ever  to  unmake  it.  Her  husband,  who's 
proud,  won't  like  her  the  better  for  it.  And  I  don't 
see,"  Miss  Banker  went  on,  "  that  her  prettiness  was 
enough — a  mere  little  feverish,  frightened  freshness; 
what  did  he  see  in  her? — to  be  so  blasted.  It  has  been 
done  with  an  atrocity  of  art " 

'  That  supposes  the  dressmaker  then  also  a  devil  ?  " 

"  Oh,  your  London  women  and  their  dressmakers !  " 
Miss  Banker  laughed. 

"  But  the  face — the  face !  "  Sutton  woefully  repeated. 

"May's?" 

"  The  little  gin  s.    It's  exquisite." 

"Exquisite?" 

"  For  unimaginable  pathos." 

"  Oh !  "  Miss  Banker  dropped. 

"  She  has  at  last  begun  to  see."  Sutton  showed 
again  how  far  he  saw.  "  It  glimmers  upon  her  inno 
cence,  she  makes  it  dimly  out — what  has  been  done  with 
her.  She's  even  worse  this  evening — the  way,  my  eye, 
she  looked  at  dinner ! — than  when  she  came.  Yes  " 
— he  was  confident — "  it  has  dawned  (how  couldn't  it, 
out  of  all  of  you?)  and  she  knows." 

"  She  ought  to  have  known  before !  "  Miss  Banker 
intelligently  sighed. 

66 


THE   TWO   FACES 

"  No ;  she  wouldn't  in  that  case  have  been  so  beauti 
ful." 

"  Beautiful?  "  cried  Miss  Banker;  "  overloaded  like 
a  monkey  in  a  show !  " 

"  The  face,  yes ;  which  goes  to  the  heart.  It's  that 
that  makes  it,"  said  Shirley  Sutton.  "  And  it's  that  " 
— he  thought  it  out — "  that  makes  the  other." 

"  I  see.     Conscious?  " 

"Horrible!" 

"  You  take  it  hard,"  said  Miss  Banker. 

Lord  Gwyther,  just  before  she  spoke,  had  come  in 
sight  and  now  was  near  them.  Sutton  on  this,  appear 
ing  to  wish  to  avoid  him,  reached,  before  answering  his 
companion's  observation,  a  door  that  opened  close  at 
hand.  "  So  hard,"  he  replied  from  that  point,  "  that 
I  shall  be  off  to-morrow  morning." 

"  And  not  see  the  rest?  "  she  called  after  him. 

But  he  had  already  gone,  and  Lord  Gwyther,  arriv 
ing,  amiably  took  up  her  question.  "  The  rest  of 
what?" 

Miss  Banker  looked  him  well  in  the  eyes.  "  Of  Mrs. 
Granthanrs  clothes." 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 


I  WAS  too  pleased  with  what  it  struck  me  that,  as 
an  old,  old  friend,  I  had  done  for  her,  not  to  go 
to  her  that  very  afternoon  with  the  news.  I  knew  she 
worked  late,  as  in  general  I  also  did;  but  I  sacrificed 
for  her  sake  a  good  hour  of  the  February  daylight. 
She  was  in  her  studio,  as  I  had  believed  she  would  be, 
where  her  card  ("Mary  J.  Tredick  " — not  Mary  Jane, 
but  Mary  Juliana)  was  manfully  on  the  door;  a  little 
tired,  a  little  old  and  a  good  deal  spotted,  but  with  her 
ugly  spectacles  taken  off^as  soon  as  I  appeared,  to  greet 
me.  She  kept  on,  while  she  scraped  her  palette  and 
wiped  her  brushes,  the  big  stained  apron  that  covered 
her  from  head  to  foot  and  that  I  have  often  enough 
before  seen  her  retain  in  conditions  giving  the  measure 
of  her  renunciation  of  her  desire  to  dazzle.  Every  fresh 
reminder  of  this  brought  home  to  me  that  she  had 
given  up  everything  but  her  work,  and  that  there  had 
been  in  her  history  some  reason.  But  I  was  as  far 
from  the  reason  as  ever.  She  had  given  up  too  much ; 
this  was  just  why  one  wanted  to  lend  her  a  hand.  I 
told  her,  at  any  rate,  that  I  had  a  lovely  job  for  her. 

"  To  copy  something  I  do  like?  " 

Her  complaint,  I  knew,  was  that  people  only  gave 
orders,  if  they  gave  them  at  all,  for  things  she  did  not 
like.  But  this  wasn't  a  case  of  copying — not  at  all,  at 
least,  in  the  common  sense.  "  It's  for  a  portrait — 
quite  in  the  air." 

68 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

"  Ah,  you  do  portraits  yourself !  " 

"  Yes,  and  you  know  how.  My  trick  won't  serve 
for  this.  What's  wanted  is  a  pretty  picture." 

"Then  of  whom?" 

"Of  nobody.  That  is  of  anybody.  Anybody  you  like." 

She  naturally  wondered.  "  Do  you  mean  I'm  my 
self  to  choose  my  sitter?  " 

"  Well,  the  oddity  is  that  there  is  to  be  no  sitter." 

"  Whom  then  is  the  picture  to  represent?  " 

"  Why,  a  handsome,  distinguished,  agreeable  man, 
of  not  more  than  forty,  clean-shaven,  thoroughly  well- 
dressed,  and  a  perfect  gentleman." 

She  continued  to  stare.  "  And  I'm  to  find  him  my 
self?" 

I  laughed  at  the  term  she  used.  '  Yes,  as  you  '  find  ' 
the  canvas,  the  colours  and  the  frame."  After  which 
I  immediately  explained.  "  I've  just  had  the  '  rum- 
mest '  visit,  the  effect  of  which  was  to  make  me  think 
of  you.  A  lady,  unknown  to  me  and  unintroduced, 
turned  up  at  my  place  at  three  o'clock.  She  had  come 
straight,  she  let  me  know,  without  preliminaries,  on 
account  of  one's  high  reputation — the  usual  thing — and 
of  her  having  admired  one's  work.  Of  course  I  in 
stantly  saw — I  mean  I  saw  it  as  soon  as  she  named 
her  affair — that  she  hadn't  understood  my  work  at 
all.  What  am  I  good  for  in  the  world  but  just  the 
impression  of  the  given,  the  presented  case?  I  can 
do  but  the  face  I  see." 

"  And  do  you  think  I  can  do  the  face  I  don't?  " 

"  No,  but  you  see  so  many  more.  You  see  them  in 
fancy  and  memory,  and  they've  come  out,  for  you,  from 
all  the  museums  you've  haunted  and  all  the  great  things 
you've  studied.  I  know  you'll  be  able  to  see  the  one 
my  visitor  wants  and  to  give  it — what's  the  crux  of  the 
business — the  tone  of  time." 

She  turned  the  question  over.  "  What  does  she  want 
it  for?" 

69 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

"  Just  for  that — for  the  tone  of  time.  And,  except 
that  it's  to  hang  over  her  chimney,  she  didn't  tell  me. 
I've  only  my  idea  that  it's  to  represent,  to  symbolise, 
as  it  were,  her  husband,  who's  not  alive  and  who  per 
haps  never  was.  This  is  exactly  what  will  give  you  a 
free  hand." 

"  With  nothing  to  go  by — no  photographs  or  other 
portraits  ?  " 

"  Nothing." 

"  She  only  proposes  to  describe  him  ?  " 

"  Not  even ;  she  wants  the  picture  itself  to  do  that. 
Her  only  condition  is  that  he  be  a  tres-bel  homme" 

She  had  begun  at  last,  a  little  thoughtfully,  to  remove 
her  apron.  "  Is  she  French  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  I  give  it  up.  She  calls  herself  Mrs. 
Bridgenorth." 

Mary  wondered.  "  Connais  pas!  I  never  heard  of 
her." 

"  You  wouldn't." 

"  You  mean  it's  not  her  real  name  ?  " 

I  hesitated.  "  I  mean  that  she's  a  very  downright 
fact,  full  of  the  implication  that  she'll  pay  a  down 
right  price.  It's  clear  to  me  that  you  can  ask  what 
you  like;  and  it's  therefore  a  chance  that  I  can't  con 
sent  to  your  missing."  My  friend  gave  no  sign  either 
way,  and  I  told  my  story.  "  She's  a  woman  of  fifty, 
perhaps  of  more,  who  has  been  pretty,  and  who  still 
presents  herself,  with  her  grey  hair  a  good  deal  pow 
dered,  as  I  judge,  to  carry  it  off,  extraordinarily  well. 
She  was  a  little  frightened  and  a  little  free;  the  latter 
because  of  the  former.  But  she  did  uncommonly  well, 
I  thought,  considering  the  oddity  of  her  wish.  This 
oddity  she  quite  admits ;  she  began  indeed  by  insisting 
on  it  so  in  advance  that  I  found  myself  expecting  I 
didn't  know  what.  She  broke  at  moments  into  French, 
which  was  perfect,  but  no  better  than  her  English, 
which  isn't  vulgar;  not  more  at  least  than  that  of 

70 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

everybody  else.  The  things  people  do  say,  and  the 
way  they  say  them,  to  artists !  She  wanted  immensely, 
I  could  see,  not  to  fail  of  her  errand,  not  to  be  treated 
as  absurd;  and  she  was  extremely  grateful  to  me  for 
meeting  her  so  far  as  I  did.  She  was  beautifully 
dressed  and  she  came  in  a  brougham." 

My  listener  took  it  in ;  then,  very  quietly,  "  Is  she 
respectable?  "  she  inquired. 

"Ah,  there  you  are!"  I  laughed;  "and  how  you 
always  pick  the  point  right  out,  even  when  one  has 
endeavoured  to  diffuse  a  specious  glamour !  She's  ex 
traordinary,"  I  pursued  after  an  instant;  "and  just 
what  she  wants  of  the  picture,  I  think,  is  to  make  her 
a  little  less  so." 

"  Who  is  she,  then  ?  What  is  she  ?  "  my  companion 
simply  went  on. 

It  threw  me  straightway  back  on  one  of  my  hobbies. 
"  Ah,  my  dear,  what  is  so  interesting  as  life  ?  What 
is,  above  all,  so  stupendous  as  London  ?  There's  every 
thing  in  it,  everything  in  the  world,  and  nothing  too 
amazing  not  some  day  to  pop  out  at  you.  What  is  a 
woman,  faded,  preserved,  pretty,  powdered,  vague, 
odd,  dropping  on  one  without  credentials,  but  with  a 
carriage  and  very  good  lace?  What  is  such  a  person 
but  a  person  who  may  have  had  adventures,  and  have 
made  them,  in  one  way  or  another,  pay?  They're, 
however,  none  of  one's  business;  it's  scarcely  on  the 
cards  that  one  should  ask  her.  I  should  like,  with  Mrs. 
Bridgenorth,  to  see  a  fellow  ask!  She  goes  in  for 
propriety,  the  real  thing.  If  I  suspect  her  of  being  the 
creation  of  her  own  talents,  she  has  clearly,  on  the 
other  hand,  seen  a  lot  of  life.  Will  you  meet  her?  "  I 
next  demanded. 

My  hostess  waited.     "  No." 

"Then  you  won't  try?" 

"Need  I  meet  her  to  try?"  And  the  question 
made  me  guess  that,  so  far  as  she  had  understood,  she 

71 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

began  to  feel  herself  a  little  taken.  "  It  seems  strange," 
she  none  the  less  mused,  "  to  attempt  to  please  her  on 
such  a  basis.  To  attempt,"  she  presently  added,  "  to 
please  her  at  all.  It's  your  idea  that  she's  not  mar 
ried?"  she,  with  this,  a  trifle  inconsequently  asked. 

"  Well,"  I  replied,  "  I've  only  had  an  hour  to  think 
of  it,  but  I  somehow  already  see  the  scene.  Not  im 
mediately,  not  the  day  after,  or  even  perhaps  the  year 
after  the  thing  she  desires  is  set  up  there,  but  in  due 
process  of  time  and  on  convenient  opportunity,  the 
transfiguration  will  occur.  '  Who  is  that  awfully  hand 
some  man  ?  '  l  That  ?  Oh,  that's  an  old  sketch  of  my 
dear  dead  husband.'  Because  I  told  her — insidiously 
sounding  her — that  she  would  want  it  to  look  old,  and 
that  the  tone  of  time  is  exactly  what  you're  full  of." 

"  I  believe  I  am,"  Mary  sighed  at  last. 

"  Then  put  on  your  hat."  I  had  proposed  to  her  on 
my  arrival  to  come  out  to  tea  with  me,  and  it  was 
when  left  alone  in  the  studio  while  she  went  to  her 
room  that  I  began  to  feel  sure  of  the  success  of  my 
errand.  The  vision  that  had  an  hour  before  deter 
mined  me  grew  deeper  and  brighter  for  her  while  I 
moved  about  and  looked  at  her  things.  There  were 
more  of  them  there  on  her  hands  than  one  liked  to  see ; 
but  at  least  they  sharpened  my  confidence,  which  was 
pleasant  for  me  in  view  of  that  of  my  visitor,  who  had 
accepted  without  reserve  my  plea  for  Miss  Tredick. 
Four  or  five  of  her  copies  of  famous  portraits — orna 
ments  of  great  public  and  private  collections — were  on 
the  walls,  and  to  see  them  again  together  was  to  feel 
at  ease  about  my  guarantee.  The  mellow  manner  of 
them  was  what  I  had  had  in  my  mind  in  saying,  to 
excuse  myself  to  Mrs.  Bridgenorth,  "  Oh,  my  things, 
you  know,  look  as  if  they  had  been  painted  to-mor 
row  !  "  It  made  no  difference  that  Mary's  Vandykes 
and  Gainsboroughs  were  reproductions  and  replicas, 
for  I  had  known  her  more  than  once  to  amuse  herself 

72 


THE   TONE    OF   TIME 

with  doing  the  thing  quite,  as  she  called  it,  off  her 
own  bat.  She  had  copied  so  bravely  so  many  brave 
things  that  she  had  at  the  end  of  her  brush  an  extraor 
dinary  bag  of  tricks.  She  had  always  replied  to  me 
that  such  things  were  mere  clever  humbug,  but  mere 
clever  humbug  was  what  our  client  happened  to  want. 
The  thing  was  to  let  her  have  it — one  could  trust  her 
for  the  rest.  And  at  the  same  time  that  I  mused  in 
this  way  I  observed  to  myself  that  there  was  already 
something  more  than,  as  the  phrase  is,  met  the  eye  In 
such  response  as  I  felt  my  friend  had  made.  I  had 
touched,  without  intention,  more  than  one  spring;  I 
had  set  in  motion  more  than  one  impulse.  I  found 
myself  indeed  quite  certain  of  this  after  she  had  come 
back  in  her  hat  and  her  jacket.  She  was  different — 
her  idea  had  flowered ;  and  she  smiled  at  me  from  un 
der  her  tense  veil,  while  she  drew  over  her  firm,  narrow 
hands  a  pair  of  fresh  gloves,  with  a  light  distinctly 
new.  "  Please  tell  your  friend  that  I'm  greatly  obliged 
to  both  of  you  and  that  I  take  the  order." 

"  Good.    And  to  give  him  all  his  good  looks?  " 

"  It's  just  to  do  that  that  I  accept.  I  shall  make  him 
supremely  beautiful — and  supremely  base." 

"  Base?  "  I  just  demurred. 

"  The  finest  gentleman  you'll  ever  have  seen,  and  the 
worst  friend." 

I  wondered,  as  I  was  startled;  but  after  an  instant 
I  laughed  for  joy.  "  Ah  well,  so  long  as  he's  not  mine ! 
I  see  we  shall  have  him,"  I  said  as  we  went,  for  truly 
I  had  touched  a  spring.  In  fact  I  had  touched  the 
spring. 

It  rang,  more  or  less,  I  was  presently  to  find,  all  over 
the  place.  I  went,  as  I  had  promised,  to  report  to  Mrs. 
Bridgenorth  on  my  mission,  and  though  she  declared 
herself  much  gratified  at  the  success  of  it  I  could  see 
she  a  little  resented  the  apparent  absence  of  any 
desire  on  Miss  Tredick's  part  for  a  preliminary  con- 

73 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

ference.  "  I  only  thought  she  might  have  liked  just 
to  see  me,  and  have  imagined  I  might  like  to  see  her." 

But  I  was  full  of  comfort.  "  You'll  see  her  when 
it's  finished.  You'll  see  her  in  time  to  thank  her." 

"  And  to  pay  her,  I  suppose,"  my  hostess  laughed, 
with  an  asperity  that  was,  after  all,  not  excessive. 
"  Will  she  take  very  long?  " 

I  thought.  "  She's  so  full  of  it  that  my  impression 
would  be  that  she'll  do  it  off  at  a  heat." 

"  She  is  full  of  it  then  ?  "  she  asked ;  and  on  hearing 
to  what  tune,  though  I  told  her  but  half,  she  broke  out 
with  admiration.  "  You  artists  are  the  most  extraor 
dinary  people !  "  It  was  almost  with  a  bad  conscience 
that  I  confessed  we  indeed  were,  and  while  she  said 
that  what  she  meant  was  that  we  seemed  to  understand 
everything,  and  I  rejoined  that  this  was  also  what  7 
meant,  she  took  me  into  another  room  to  see  the  place 
for  the  picture — a  proceeding  of  which  the  effect  was 
singularly  to  confirm  the  truth  in  question.  The  place 
for  the  picture — in  her  own  room,  as  she  called  it,  a 
boudoir  at  the  back,  overlooking  the  general  garden  of 
the  approved  modern  row  and,  as  she  said,  only  just 
wanting  that  touch — proved  exactly  the  place  (the 
space  of  a  large  panel  in  the  white  woodwork  over  the 
mantel)  that  I  had  spoken  of  to  my  friend.  She  put 
it  quite  candidly,  "Don't  you  see  what  it  will  do?" 
and  looked  at  me,  wonderfully,  as  for  a  sign  that  I 
could  sympathetically  take  from  her  what  she  didn't 
literally  say.  She  said  it,  poor  woman,  so  very  nearly 
that  I  had  no  difficulty  whatever.  The  portrait,  taste 
fully  enshrined  there,  of  the  finest  gentleman  one  should 
ever  have  seen,  would  do  even  more  for  herself  than 
it  would  do  for  the  room. 

I  may  as  well  mention  at  once  that  my  observation 
of  Mrs.  Bridgenorth  was  not  in  the  least  of  a  nature 
to  unseat  me  from  the  hobby  I  have  already  named. 
In  the  light  of  the  impression  she  made  on  me  life 

74 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

seemed  quite  as  prodigious  and  London  quite  as  amaz 
ing  as  I  had  ever  contended,  and  nothing  could  have 
been  more  in  the  key  of  that  experience  than  the  manner 
in  which  everything  was  vivid  between  us  and  nothing 
expressed.  We  remained  on  the  surface  with  the  ten 
acity  of  shipwrecked  persons  clinging  to  a  plank.  Our 
plank  was  our  concentrated  gaze  at  Mrs.  Bridgenorth's 
mere  present.  We  allowed  her  past  to  exist  for  us  only 
in  the  form  of  the  prettiness  that  she  had  gallantly  res 
cued  from  it  and  to  which  a  few  scraps  of  its  identity 
still  adhered.  She  was  amiable,  gentle,  consistently 
proper.  She  gave  me  more  than  anything  else  the 
sense,  simply,  of  waiting.  She  was  like  a  house  so 
freshly  and  successfully  "  done  up  "  that  you  were  sur 
prised  it  wasn't  occupied.  She  was  waiting  for  some 
thing  to  happen — for  somebody  to  come.  She  was 
waiting,  above  all,  for  Mary  Tredick's  work.  She 
clearly  counted  that  it  would  help  her. 

I  had  foreseen  the  fact — the  picture  was  produced 
at  a  heat;  rapidly,  directly,  at  all  events,  for  the  sort 
of  thing  it  proved  to  be.  I  left  my  friend  alone  at  first, 
left  the  ferment  to  work,  troubling  her  with  no  ques 
tions  and  asking  her  for  no  news ;  two  or  three  weeks 
passed,  and  I  never  went  near  her.  Then  at  last,  one 
afternoon  as  the  light  was  failing,  I  looked  in.  She 
immediately  knew  what  I  wanted.  "  Oh  yes,  I'm 
doing  him." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  I've  respected  your  intensity,  but 
I  have  felt  curious." 

I  may  not  perhaps  say  that  she  was  never  so  sad  as 
when  she  laughed,  but  it's  certain  that  she  always 
laughed  when  she  was  sad.  When,  however,  poor 
dear,  for  that  matter,  was  she,  secretly,  not?  Her 
little  gasps  of  mirth  were  the  mark  of  her  worst  mo 
ments.  But  why  should  she  have  one  of  these  just 
now  ?  "  Oh,  I  know  your  curiosity !  "  she  replied  to 
me ;  and  the  small  chill  of  her  amusement  scarcely  met 

n 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

it.  "  He's  coming  out,  but  I  can't  show  him  to  you  yet. 
I  must  muddle  it  through  in  my  own  way.  It  has  in 
sisted  on  being,  after  all,  a  *  likeness,'  "  she  added. 
But  nobody  will  ever  know." 

"Nobody?" 

"  Nobody  she  sees." 

"  Ah,  she  doesn't,  poor  thing,"  I  returned,  "  seem  to 
see  anybody !  " 

"  So  much  the  better.  I'll  risk  it."  On  which  I  felt 
I  should  have  to  wait,  though  I  had  suddenly  grown 
impatient.  But  I  still  hung  about,  and  while  I  did  so 
she  explained.  "  If  what  I've  done  is  really  a  portrait, 
the  condition  itself  prescribed  it.  If  I  was  to  do  the 
most  beautiful  man  in  the  world  I  could  do  but  one." 

We  looked  at  each  other ;  then  I  laughed.  "  It  can 
scarcely  be  me!  But  you're  getting,"  I  asked,  "  the 
great  thing?  " 

"  The  infamy?    Oh  yes,  please  God." 

It  took  away  my  breath  a  little,  and  I  even  for  the 
moment  scarce  felt  at  liberty  to  press.  But  one  could 
always  be  cheerful.  "  What  I  meant  is  the  tone  of 
time." 

"  Getting  it,  my  dear  man  ?  Didn't  I  get  it  long 
ago?  Don't  I  show  it — the  tone  of  time?"  she  sud 
denly,  strangely  sighed  at  me,  with  something  in  her 
face  I  had  never  yet  seen.  "  I  can't  give  it  to  him 
more  than — for  all  these  years — he  was  to  have  given 
it  to  me." 

I  scarce  knew  what  smothered  passion,  what  remem 
bered  wrong,  what  mixture  of  joy  and  pain  my  words 
had  accidentally  quickened.  Such  an  effect  of  them 
could  only  become,  for  me,  an  instant  pity,  which,  how 
ever,  I  brought  out  but  indirectly.  "  It's  the  tone,"  I 
smiled,  "  in  which  you're  speaking  now." 

This  served,  unfortunately,  as  something  of  a  check. 
"  I  didn't  mean  to  speak  now."  Then  with  her  eyes 
on  the  picture,  "  I've  said  everything  there.  Come 
back,"  she  added,  "  in  three  days.  He'll  be  all  right." 

76 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

He  was  indeed  when  at  last  I  saw  him.  She  had 
produced  an  extraordinary  thing — a  thing  wonderful, 
ideal,  for  the  part  it  was  to  play.  My  only  reserve, 
from  the  first,  was  that  it  was  too  fine  for  its  part,  that 
something  much  less  "  sincere  "  would  equally  have 
served  Mrs.  Bridgenorth's  purpose,  and  that  relega 
tion  to  that  lady's  "  own  room  " — whatever  charm  it 
was  to  work  there — might  only  mean  for  it  cruel  ob 
scurity.  The  picture  is  before  me  now,  so  that  I  could 
describe  it  if  description  availed.  It  represents  a  man 
of  about  five-and-thirty,  seen  only  as  to  the  head  and 
shoulders,  but  dressed,  the  observer  gathers,  in  a  fash 
ion  now  almost  antique  and  which  was  far  from  con 
temporaneous  with  the  date  of  the  work.  His  high, 
slightly  narrow  face,  which  would  be  perhaps  too 
aquiline  but  for  the  beauty  of  the  forehead  and  the 
sweetness  of  the  mouth,  has  a  charm  that  even,  after 
all  these  years,  still  stirs  my  imagination.  His  type  has 
altogether  a  distinction  that  you  feel  to  have  been  firmly 
caught  and  yet  not  vulgarly  emphasised.  The  eyes  are 
just  too  near  together,  but  they  are,  in  a  wondrous 
way,  both  careless  and  intense,  while  lip,  cheek,  and 
chin,  smooth  and  clear,  are  admirably  drawn.  Youth 
is  still,  you  see,  in  all  his  presence,  the  joy  and  pride 
of  life,  the  perfection  of  a  high  spirit  and  the  expecta 
tion  of  a  great  fortune,  which  he  takes  for  granted 
with  unconscious  insolence.  Nothing  has  ever  hap 
pened  to  humiliate  or  disappoint  him,  and  if  my  fancy 
doesn't  run  away  with  me  the  whole  presentation  of 
him  is  a  guarantee  that  he  will  die  without  having 
suffered.  He  is  so  handsome,  in  short,  that  you  can 
scarcely  say  what  he  means,  and  so  happy  that  you  can 
scarcely  guess  what  he  feels. 

It  is  of  course,  I  hasten  to  add,  an  appreciably  fem 
inine  rendering,  light,  delicate,  vague,  imperfectly  syn 
thetic — insistent  and  evasive,  above  all,  in  the  wrong 
places ;  but  the  composition,  none  the  less,  is  beautiful 

77 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

and  the  suggestion  infinite.  The  grandest  air  of  the 
thing  struck  me  in  fact,  when  first  I  saw  it,  as  coming 
from  the  high  artistic  impertinence  with  which  it  of 
fered  itself  as  painted  about  1850.  It  would  have  been 
a  rare  flower  of  refinement  for  that  dark  day.  The 
"  tone  " — that  of  such  a  past  as  it  pretended  to — was 
there  almost  to  excess,  a  brown  bloom  into  which  the 
image  seemed  mysteriously  to  retreat.  The  subject  of 
it  looks  at  me  now  across  more  years  and  more  knowl 
edge,  but  what  I  felt  at  the  moment  was  that  he  man 
aged  to  be  at  once  a  triumphant  trick  and  a  plaus 
ible  evocation.  He  hushed  me,  I  remember,  with 
so  many  kinds  of  awe  that  I  shouldn't  have  dreamt  of 
asking  who  he  was.  All  I  said,  after  my  first  incoher 
ences  of  wonder  at  my  friend's  practised  skill,  was: 
"  And  you've  arrived  at  this  truth  without  docu 
ments  ?  " 

"  It  depends  on  what  you  call  documents." 

"  Without  notes,  sketches,  studies?  " 

"  I  destroyed  them  years  ago." 

"  Then  you  once  had  them?  " 

She  just  hung  fire.    "  I  once  had  everything." 

It  told  me  both  more  and  less  than  I  had  asked; 
enough  at  all  events  to  make  my  next  question,  as  I 
uttered  it,  sound  even  to  myself  a  little  foolish.  "  So 
that  it's  all  memory?  " 

From  where  she  stood  she  looked  once  more  at  her 
work ;  after  which  she  jerked  away  and,  taking  several 
steps,  came  back  to  me  with  something  new — whatever 
it  was  I  had  already  seen — in  her  air  and  answer. 
"  It's  all  hate!  "  she  threw  at  me,  and  then  went  out  of 
the  room.  It  was  not  till  she  had  gone  that  I  quite 
understood  why.  Extremely  affected  by  the  impression 
visibly  made  on  me,  she  had  burst  into  tears  but  had 
wished  me  not  to  see  them.  She  left  me  alone  for 
some  time  with  her  wonderful  subject,  and  I  again,  in 
her  absence,  made  things  out.  He  was  dead — he  had 

78 


THE   TONE   OF    TIME 

been  dead  for  years;  the  sole  humiliation,  as  I  have 
called  it,  that  he  was  to  know  had  come  to  him  in 
that  form.  The  canvas  held  and  cherished  him,  in  any 
case,  as  it  only  holds  the  dead.  She  had  suffered  from 
him,  it  came  to  me,  the  worst  that  a  woman  can  suffer, 
and  the  wound  he  had  dealt  her,  though  hidden,  had 
never  effectually  healed.  It  had  bled  again  while  she 
worked.  Yet  when  she  at  last  reappeared  there  was 
but  one  thing  to  say.  "  The  beauty,  heaven  knows, 
I  see.  But  I  don't  see  wrhat  you  call  the  infamy." 

She  gave  him  a  last  look — again  she  turned  away. 
"  Oh,  he  was  like  that." 

"  Well,  whatever  he  was  like,"  I  remember  replying, 
"  I  wonder  you  can  bear  to  part  with  him.  Isn't  it 
better  to  let  her  see  the  picture  first  here?  " 

As  to  this  she  doubted.  "  I  don't  think  I  want  her 
to  come." 

I  wondered.  "  You  continue  to  object  so  to  meet 
her?" 

"  What  good  will  it  do  ?  It's  quite  impossible  I 
should  alter  him  for  her." 

"  Oh,  she  won't  want  that! "  I  laughed.  "  She'll 
adore  him  as  he  is." 

"  Are  you  quite  sure  of  your  idea  ?  " 

"  That  he's  to  figure  as  Mr.  Bridgenorth?  Well,  if 
I  hadn't  been  from  the  first,  my  dear  lady,  I  should  be 
now.  Fancy,  with  the  chance,  her  not  jumping  at  him ! 
Yes,  he'll  figure  as  Mr.  Bridgenorth." 

"  Mr.  Bridgenorth !  "  she  echoed,  making  the  sound, 
with  her  small,  cold  laugh,  grotesquely  poor  for  him. 
He  might  really  have  been  a  prince,  and  I  wondered  if 
he  hadn't  been.  She  had,  at  all  events,  a  new  notion. 
"  Do  you  mind  my  having  it  taken  to  your  place  and 
letting  her  come  to  see  it  there?"  Which — as  I  im 
mediately  embraced  her  proposal,  deferring  to  her  rea 
sons,  whatever  they  were — was  what  was  speedily  ar 
ranged. 

79 


THE   BETTER   SORT 


II 

THE  next  day  therefore  I  had  the  picture  in  charge, 
and  on  the  following  Mrs.  Bridgenorth,  whom  I  had 
notified,  arrived.  I  had  placed  it,  framed  and  on  an 
easel,  well  in  evidence,  and  I  have  never  forgotten  the 
look  and  the  cry  that,  as  she  became  aware  of  it,  leaped 
into  her  face  and  from  her  lips.  It  was  an  extraor 
dinary  moment,  all  the  more  that  it  found  me  quite 
unprepared — so  extraordinary  that  I  scarce  knew  at 
first  what  had  happened.  By  the  time  I  really  per 
ceived,  moreover,  more  things  had  happened  than  one, 
so  that  when  I  pulled  myself  together  it  was  to  face 
the  situation  as  a  whole.  She  had  recognised  on  the 
instant  the  subject;  that  came  first  and  was  irrepres- 
sibly  vivid  in  her.  Her  recognition  had,  for  the  length 
of  a  flash,  lighted  for  her  the  possibility  that  the  stroke 
had  been  directed.  That  came  second,  and  she  flushed 
with  it  as  with  a  blow  in  the  face.  What  came  third — 
and  it  was  what  was  really  most  wondrous — was  the 
quick  instinct  of  getting  both  her  strange  recognition 
and  her  blind  suspicion  well  in  hand.  She  couldn't 
control,  however,  poor  woman,  the  strong  colour  in  her 
face  and  the  quick  tears  in  her  eyes.  She  could  only 
glare  at  the  canvas,  gasping,  grimacing,  and  try  to  gain 
time.  Whether  in  surprise  or  in  resentment  she  in 
tensely  reflected,  feeling  more  than  anything  else  how 
little  she  might  prudently  show;  and  I  was  conscious 
even  at  the  moment  that  nothing  of  its  kind  could  have 
been  finer  than  her  effort  to  swallow  her  shock  in  ten 
seconds. 

How  many  seconds  she  took  I  didn't  measure; 
enough,  assuredly,  for  me  also  to  profit.  I  gained 
more  time  than  she,  and  the  greatest  oddity  doubtless 
was  my  own  private  manoeuvre — the  quickest  calcula 
tion  that,  acting  from  a  mere  confused  instinct,  I  had 

80 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

ever  made.  If  she  had  known  the  great  gentleman 
represented  there  and  yet  had  determined  on  the  spot 
to  carry  herself  as  ignorant,  all  my  loyalty  to  Mary 
Tredick  came  to  the  surface  in  a  prompt  counter-move. 
What  gave  me  opportunity  was  the  red  in  her  cheek. 
"  Why,  you've  known  him !  " 

I  saw  her  ask  herself  for  an  instant  if  she  mightn't 
successfully  make  her  startled  state  pass  as  the  mere 
glow  of  pleasure — her  natural  greeting  to  her  acquisi 
tion.  She  was  pathetically,  yet  at  the  same  time  almost 
comically,  divided.  Her  line  was  so  to  cover  her  tracks 
that  every  avowal  of  a  past  connection  was  a  danger; 
but  it  also  concerned  her  safety  to  learn,  in  the  light  of 
our  astounding  coincidence,  how  far  she  already  stood 
exposed.  She  meanwhile  begged  the  question.  She 
smiled  through  her  tears.  "  He's  too  magnificent !  " 

But  I  gave  her,  as  I  say,  all  too  little  time.  "  Who 
is  he?  Who  wo?  he?" 

It  must  have  been  my  look  still  more  than  my  words 
that  determined  her.  She  wavered  but  an  instant 
longer,  panted,  laughed,  cried  again,  and  then,  drop 
ping  into  the  nearest  seat,  gave  herself  up  so  com 
pletely  that  I  was  almost  ashamed.  "  Do  you  think 
I'd  tell  you  his  name?  "  The  burden  of  the  backward 
years — all  the  effaced  and  ignored — lived  again,  al 
most  like  an  accent  unlearned  but  freshly  breaking  out 
at  a  touch,  in  the  very  sound  of  the  words.  These  per 
ceptions  she,  however,  the  next  thing  showed  me,  were 
a  game  at  which  two  could  play.  She  had  to  look  at 
me  but  an  instant.  "  Why,  you  really  don't  know  it !  " 

I  judged  best  to  be  frank.    "  I  don't  know  it." 

"  Then  how  does  she?  " 

"  How  do  you  ?  "  I  laughed.  "  I'm  a  different  mat 
ter." 

She  sat  a  minute  turning  things  round,  staring  at 
the  picture.  "  The  likeness,  the  likeness ! "  It  was 
almost  too  much. 

81 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"It's  so  true?" 

"  Beyond  everything." 

I  considered.  "  But  a  resemblance  to  a  known  in 
dividual — that  wasn't  what  you  wanted." 

She  sprang  up  at  this  in  eager  protest.  "  Ah,  no 
one  else  would  see  it." 

I  showed  again,  I  fear,  my  amusement.  "  No  one 
but  you  and  she  ?  " 

"  It's  her  doing  him!  "  She  was  held  by  her  wonder. 
"  Doesn't  she,  on  your  honour,  know  ?  " 

'  That  his  is  the  very  head  you  would  have  liked  if 
you  had  dared?  Not  a  bit.  How  should  she?  She 
knows  nothing — on  my  honour." 

Mrs.  Bridgenorth  continued  to  marvel.  "  She  just 
painted  him  for  the  kind  of  face ?  " 

'  That  corresponds  with  my  description  of  what  you 
wished  ?  Precisely." 

"  But  hozv — after  so  long?  From  memory?  As  a 
friend?" 

"  As  a  reminiscence — yes.  Visual  memory,  you  see, 
in  our  uncanny  race,  is  wonderful.  As  the  ideal  thing, 
simply,  for  your  purpose.  You  are  then  suited  ?  "  I, 
after  an  instant  added. 

She  had  again  been  gazing,  and  at  this  turned  her 
eyes  on  me;  but  I  saw  she  couldn't  speak,  couldn't  do 
more  at  least  than  sound,  unutterably,  "  Suited !  "  so 
that  I  was  positively  not  surprised  when  suddenly — 
just  as  Mary  had  done,  the  power  to  produce  this  effect 
seeming  a  property  of  the  model — she  burst  into  tears. 
I  feel  no  harsher  in  relating  it,  however  I  may  appear, 
than  I  did  at  the  moment,  but  it  is  a  fact  that  while 
she  just  wept  I  literally  had  a  fresh  inspiration  on  be 
half  of  Miss  Tredick's  interests.  I  knew  exactly,  more 
over,  before  my  companion  had  recovered  herself,  what 
she  wrould  next  ask  me ;  and  I  consciously  brought  this 
appeal  on  in  order  to  have  it  over.  I  explained  that 
I  had  not  the  least  idea  of  the  identity  of  our  artist's 

82 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

sitter,  to  which  she  had  given  me  no  clue.  I  had  noth 
ing  but  my  impression  that  she  had  known  him — known 
him  well;  and,  from  whatever  material  she  had 
worked,  the  fact  of  his  having  also  been  known  to  Mrs. 
Bridgenorth  was  a  coincidence  pure  and  simple.  It 
partook  of  the  nature  of  prodigy,  but  such  prodigies  did 
occur.  My  visitor  listened  with  avidity  and  credulity. 
She  was  so  far  reassured.  Then  I  saw  her  question 
come.  "  Well,  if  she  doesn't  dream  he  was  ever  any 
thing  to  me — or  what  he  will  be  now — I'm  going  to 
ask  you,  as  a  very  particular  favour,  never  to  tell  her. 
She  will  want  to  know  of  course  exactly  how  I've 
been  struck.  You'll  naturally  say  that  I'm  delighted, 
but  may  I  exact  from  you  that  you  say  nothing  else?  " 
There  was  supplication  in  her  face,  but  I  had  to 
think.  "  There  are  conditions  I  must  put  to  you  first, 
and  one  of  them  is  also  a  question,  only  more  frank 
than  yours.  Was  this  mysterious  personage — frustrat 
ed  by  death — to  have  married  you  ?  " 

She  met  it  bravely.    "  Certainly,  if  he  had  lived." 
I  was  only  amused  at  an  artlessness  in  her  "  certain 
ly."     "  Very  good.     But  why  do  you  wish  the  coin 
cidence 

"  Kept  from  her?  "  She  knew  exactly  why.  "  Be 
cause  if  she  suspects  it  she  won't  let  me  have  the  picture. 
Therefore,"  she  added  with  decision,  "  you  must  let 
me  pay  for  it  on  the  spot." 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  on  the  spot  ?  " 
"  I'll  send  you  a  cheque  as  soon  as  I  get  home." 
"  Oh,"  I  laughed,  "  let  us  understand.    Why  do  you 
consider  she  won't  let  you  have  the  picture  ?  " 

She  made  me  wait  a  little  for  this,  but  when  it  came 
it  was  perfectly  lucid.  "  Because  she'll  then  see  how 
much  more  I  must  want  it." 

"  How  much  less — wouldn't  it  be  rather,  since  tHe 
bargain  was,  as  the  more  convenient  thing,  not  for  a 
likeness?" 

83 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Oh,"  said  Mrs.  Bridgenorth  with  impatience,  "  the 
likeness  will  take  care  of  itself.  She'll  put  this  and  that 
together."  Then  she  brought  out  her  real  apprehen 
sion.  "  She'll  be  jealous." 

".Oh !  "  I  laughed.    But  I  was  startled. 

"She'll  hate  me!" 

I  wondered.     "  But  I  don't  think  she  liked  him." 

"  Don't  think?  "  She  stared  at  me,  with  her  echo, 
over  all  that  might  be  in  it,  then  seemed  to  find  little 
enough.  "  I  say  I  " 

It  was  almost  comically  the  old  Mrs.  Bridgenorth. 
"  But  I  gather  from  her  that  he  was  bad." 

"  Then  what  was  she?  " 

I  barely  hesitated.     "  What  were  you?  " 

"  That's  my  own  business."  And  she  turned  again 
to  the  picture.  "  He  was  good  enough  for  her  to  dc 
that  of  him." 

I  took  it  in  once  more.  "  Artistically  speaking,  for 
the  way  it's  done,  it's  one  of  the  most  curious  things 
I've  ever  seen." 

"  It's  a  grand  treat !  "  said  poor  Mrs.  Bridgenorth 
more  simply. 

It  was,  it  is  really ;  which  is  exactly  what  made  the 
case  so  interesting.  "  Yet  I  feel  somehow  that,  as  I 
say,  it  wasn't  done  with  love." 

It  was  wonderful  how  she  understood.  "  It  was 
done  with  rage." 

"  Then  what  have  you  to  fear?  " 

She  knew  again  perfectly.  "  What  happened  when 
he  made  me  jealous.  So  much,"  she  declared,  "  that 
if  you'll  give  me  your  word  for  silence " 

"  Well  ?  " 

"  Why,  I'll  double  the  money." 

"  Oh,"  I  replied,  taking  a  turn  about  in  the  excite 
ment  of  our  concurrence,  "  that's  exactly  what — to  do 
a  still  better  stroke  for  her — it  had  just  come  to  me 
to  propose !  " 

84 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

"  It's  understood  then,  on  your  oath,  as  a  gentle 
man?  "  She  was  so  eager  that  practically  this  settled 
it,  though  I  moved  to  and  fro  a  little  while  she  watched 
me  in  suspense.  It  vibrated  all  round  us  that  she  had 
gone  out  to  the  thing  in  a  stifled  flare,  that  a  whole 
close  relation  had  in  the  few  minutes  revived.  We 
know  it  of  the  truly  amiable  person  that  he  will  strain 
a  point  for  another  that  he  wouldn't  strain  for  himself. 
The  stroke  to  put  in  for  Mary  was  positively  pre 
scribed.  The  work  represented  really  much  more  than 
had  been  covenanted,  and  if  the  purchaser  chose  so  to 
value  it  this  was  her  own  affair.  I  decided.  "  If  it's 
understood  also  on  your  word." 

We  were  so  at  one  that  we  shook  hands  on  it.  "  And 
when  may  I  send  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  shall  see  her  this  evening.  Say  early  to 
morrow." 

"  Early  to-morrow."  And  I  went  with  her  to  her 
brougham,  into  which,  I  remember,  as  she  took  leave, 
she  expressed  regret  that  she  mightn't  then  and  there 
have  introduced  the  canvas  for  removal.  I  consoled 
her  with  remarking  that  she  couldn't  have  got  it  in — 
which  was  not  quite  true. 

I  saw  Mary  Tredick  before  dinner,  and  though  I 
was  not  quite  ideally  sure  of  my  present  ground  with 
her  I  instantly  brought  out  my  news.  "  She's  so  de 
lighted  that  I  felt  I  must  in  conscience  do  something 
still  better  for  you.  She's  not  to  have  it  on  the  original 
terms.  I've  put  up  the  price." 

Mary  wondered.    "  But  to  what?  " 

"  Well,  to  four  hundred.  If  you  say  so,  I'll  try  even 
for  five." 

"  Oh,  she'll  never  give  that." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon." 

"After  the  agreement?"  She  looked  grave.  "I 
don't  like  such  leaps  and  bounds." 

"  But,  my  dear  child,  they're  yours.    You  contracted 

85 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

for  a  decorative  trifle,  and  you've  produced  a  breathing 
masterpiece." 

She  thought.  "  Is  that  what  she  calls  it?  "  Then, 
as  having  to  think  too,  I  hesitated,  "  What  does  she 
know  ?  "  she  pursued. 

"  She  knows  she  wants  it." 

"  So  much  as  that  ?  " 

At  this  I  had  to  brace  myself  a  little.  "  So  much  that 
she'll  send  me  the  cheque  this  afternoon,  and  that  you'll 
have  mine  by  the  first  post  in  the  morning." 

"  Before  she  has  even  received  the  picture  ?  " 

"  Oh,  she'll  send  for  it  to-morrow."  And  as  I  was 
dining  out  and  had  still  to  dress,  my  time  was  up. 
Mary  came  with  me  to  the  door,  where  I  repeated  my 
assurance.  "  You  shall  receive  my  cheque  by  the  first 
post."  To  which  I  added :  "  If  it's  little  enough  for 
a  lady  so  much  in  need  to  pay  for  any  husband,  it  isn't 
worth  mentioning  as  the  price  of  such  a  one  as  you've 
given  her !  " 

I  was  in  a  hurry,  but  she  held  me.  "  Then  you've 
felt  your  idea  confirmed  ?  " 

"My  idea?" 

"  That  that's  what  I  have  given  her  ?  " 

I  suddenly  fancied  I  had  perhaps  gone  too  far;  but 
I  had  kept  my  cab  and  was  already  in  it.  "  Well,  put 
it,"  I  called  with  excess  of  humour  over  the  front, 
"  that  you've,  at  any  rate,  given  him  a  wife !  " 

When  on  my  return  from  dinner  that  night  I  let 
myself  in,  my  first  care,  in  my  dusty  studio,  was  to 
make  light  for  another  look  at  Mary's  subject.  I  felt 
the  impulse  to  bid  him  good  night,  but,  to  my  aston 
ishment,  he  was  no  longer  there.  His  place  was  a 
void — he  had  already  disappeared.  I  saw,  however, 
after  my  first  surprise,  what  had  happened — saw  it 
moreover,  frankly,  with  some  relief.  As  my  servants 
were  in  bed  I  could  ask  no  questions,  but  it  was  clear 
that  Mrs.  Bridgenorth,  whose  note,  containing  its 

86 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

cheque,  lay  on  my  table,  had  been  after  all  unable  to 
wait.  The  note,  I  found,  mentioned  nothing  but  the 
enclosure;  but  it  had  come  by  hand,  and  it  was  her 
silence  that  told  the  tale.  Her  messenger  had  been  in 
structed  to  "  act " ;  he  had  come  with  a  vehicle,  he 
had  transferred  to  it  canvas  and  frame.  The  prize 
was  now  therefore  landed  and  the  incident  closed.  I 
didn't  altogether,  the  next  morning,  know  why,  but  I 
had  slept  the  better  for  the  sense  of  these  things,  and 
as  soon  as  my  attendant  came  in  I  asked  for  details. 
It  was  on  this  that  his  answer  surprised  me.  "  No, 
sir,  there  was  no  man ;  she  came  herself.  She  had  only 
a  four-wheeler,  but  I  helped  her,  and  we  got  it  in.  It 
was  a  squeeze,  sir,  but  she  would  take  it." 

I  wondered.  "  She  had  a  four-wheeler?  and  not 
her  servant?  " 

"  No,  no,  sir.  She  came,  as  you  may  say,  single- 
handed." 

"  And  not  even  in  her  brougham,  which  would  have 
been  larger." 

My  man,  with  his  habit,  weighed  it.  "  But  have  she 
a  brougham,  sir  ?  " 

"  Why,  the  one  she  was  here  in  yesterday." 

Then  light  broke.  "  Oh,  that  lady!  It  wasn't  her, 
sir.  It  was  Miss  Tredick." 

Light  broke,  but  darkness  a  little  followed  it — a 
darkness  that,  after  breakfast,  guided  my  steps  back 
to  my  friend.  There,  in  its  own  first  place,  1  met  her 
creation ;  but  I  saw  it  would  be  a  different  thing  meet 
ing  her.  She  immediately  put  down  on  a  table,  as  if 
she  had  expected  me,  the  cheque  I  had  sent  her  over 
night.  "  Yes,  I've  brought  it  away.  And  I  can't  take 
the  money." 

I  found  myself  in  despair.  '  You  want  to  keep 
him?" 

"  I  don't  understand  what  has  happened." 

"You  just  back  out?" 

87 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  I  don't  understand,"  she  repeated,  "  what  has  hap 
pened."  But  what  I  had  already  perceived  was,  on 
the  contrary,  that  she  very  nearly,  that  she  in  fact  quite 
remarkably,  did  understand.  It  was  as  if  in  my  zeal 
I  had  given  away  my  case,  and  I  felt  that  my  test 
was  coming.  She  had  been  thinking  all  night  with 
intensity,  and  Mrs.  Bridgenorth's  generosity,  coupled 
with  Mrs.  Bridgenorth's  promptitude,  had  kept  her 
awake.  Thence,  for  a  woman  nervous  and  critical, 
imaginations,  visions,  questions.  "  Why,  in  writing 
me  last  night,  did  you  take  for  granted  it  was  she  who 
had  swooped  down?  Why,"  asked  Mary  Tredick, 
"  should  she  swoop?  " 

Well,  if  I  could  drive  a  bargain  for  Mary,  I  felt  I 
could  a  fortiori  lie  for  her.  "  Because  it's  her  way. 
She  does  swoop.  She's  impatient  and  uncontrolled. 
And  it's  affectation  for  you  to  pretend,"  I  said  with 
diplomacy,  "  that  you  see  no  reason  for  her  falling  in 
love " 

"  Falling  in  love?  "    She  took  me  straight  up. 

"  With  that  gentleman.  Certainly.  What  woman 
wouldn't?  What  woman  didn't?  I  really  don't  see, 
you  know,  your  right  to  back  out." 

"  I  won't  back  out,"  she  presently  returned,  "if 
you'll  answer  me  a  question.  Does  she  know  the  man 
represented  ?  "  Then  as  I  hung  fire :  "  It  has  come  to 
me  that  she  must.  It  would  account  for  so  much.  For 
the  strange  way  I  feel,"  she  went  on,  "  and  for  the 
extraordinary  sum  you've  been  able  to  extract  from 
her." 

It  was  a  pity,  and  I  flushed  with  it,  besides  wincing 
at  the  word  she  used.  But  Mrs.  Bridgenorth  and  I, 
between  us,  had  clearly  made  the  figure  too  high. 
"  You  think  that,  if  she  had  guessed,  I  would  naturally 
work  it  to  '  extract '  more  ?  " 

She  turned  away  from  me  on  this  and,  looking  blank 
in  her  trouble,  moved  vaguely  about.  Then  she 

88 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

stopped.     "  I  see  him  set  up  there.     I  hear  her  say  it. 
What  you  said  she  would  make  him  pass  for." 

I  believe  I  foolishly  tried — though  only  for  an  in 
stant — to  look  as  if  I  didn't  remember  what  I  had  said. 
"Her  husband?" 

"  He  wasn't." 

The  next  minute  I  had  risked  it.    "  Was  he  yours  ?  " 

I  don't  know  what  I  had  expected,  but  I  found  my 
self  surprised  at  her  mere  pacific  head-shake.  "  No." 

"  Then  why  mayn't  he  have  been ?  " 

"  Another  woman's  ?  Because  he  died,  to  my  abso 
lute  knowledge,  unmarried."  She  spoke  as  quietly. 
"  He  had  known  many  women,  and  there  was  one  in 
particular  with  whom  he  became — and  too  long  re 
mained — ruinously  intimate.  She  tried  to  make  him 
marry  her,  and  he  was  very  near  it.  Death,  however, 
saved  him.  But  she  was  the  reason " 

"  Yes?  "  I  feared  again  from  her  a  wave  of  pain, 
and  I  went  on  while  she  kept  it  back.  "  Did  you  know 
her?" 

"  She  was  one  I  wouldn't."  Then  she  brought  it 
out.  "  She  was  the  reason  he  failed  me."  Her  suc 
cessful  detachment  somehow  said  all,  reduced  me  to  a 
flat,  kind  "  Oh!  "  that  marked  my  sense  of  her  telling 
me,  against  my  expectation,  more  than  I  knew  what 
to  do  with.  But  it  was  just  while  I  wondered  how  to 
turn  her  confidence  that  she  repeated,  in  a  changed 
voice,  her  challenge  of  a  moment  before.  "  Does  she 
know  the  man  represented  ?  " 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea."  And  having  so  acquitted 
myself  I  added,  with  what  strikes  me  now  as  futility : 
"  She  certainly — yesterday — didn't  name  him." 

"  Only  recognised  him?  " 

"  If  she  did  she  brilliantly  concealed  it." 

"  So  that  you  got  nothing  from  her  ?  " 

It  was  a  question  that  offered  me  a  certain  advantage. 
"  I  thought  you  accused  me  of  getting  too  much." 

89 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

She  gave  me  a  long  look,  and  I  now  saw  everything 
in  her  face.  "  It's  very  nice — what  you're  doing  for 
me,  and  you  do  it  handsomely.  It's  beautiful — beauti 
ful,  and  I  thank  you  with  all  my  heart.  But  I  know." 

"  And  what  do  you  know  ?  " 

She  went  about  now  preparing  her  usual  work. 
"  What  he  must  have  been  to  her." 

"  You  mean  she  was  the  person?  " 

"  Well,"  she  said,  putting  on  her  old  spectacles, 
"  she  was  one  of  them." 

"  And  you  accept  so  easily  the  astounding  coinci 
dence ?" 

"  Of  my  finding  myself,  after  years,  in  so  extraor 
dinary  a  relation  with  her?  What  do  you  call  easily? 
I've  passed  a  night  of  torment." 

"  But  what  put  it  into  your  head ?  " 

"  That  I  had  so  blindly  and  strangely  given  him 
back  to  her  ?  You  put  it — yesterday." 

"And  how?" 

"  I  can't  tell  you.  You  didn't  in  the  least  mean  to 
— on  the  contrary.  But  you  dropped  the  seed.  The 
plant,  after  you  had  gone,"  she  said  with  a  business 
like  pull  at  her  easel,  "  the  plant  began  to  grow.  I 
saw  them  there — in  your  studio — face  to  face." 

"  You  were  jealous  ?  "  I  laughed. 

She  gave  me  through  her  glasses  another  look,  and 
they  seemed,  from  this  moment,  in  their  queerness,  to 
have  placed  her  quite  on  the  other  side  of  the  gulf  of 
time.  She  was  firm  there ;  she  was  settled ;  I  couldn't 
get  at  her  now.  "I  see  she  told  you  I  would  be."  I 
doubtless  kept  down  too  little  my  start  at  it,  and  she 
immediately  pursued.  "  You  say  I  accept  the  coinci 
dence,  which  is  of  course  prodigious.  But  such  things 
happen.  Why  shouldn't  I  accept  it  if  you  do  ?  " 

"Do  I?  "I  smiled. 

She  began  her  work  in  silence,  but  she  presently  ex 
claimed  :  "  I'm  glad  I  didn't  meet  her!  " 

90 


THE   TONE   OF   TIME 

"  I  don't  yet  see  why  you  wouldn't." 

"  Neither  do  I.     It  was  an  instinct." 

"  Your  instincts  " — I  tried  to  be  ironic — "  are  mi 
raculous." 

"  They  have  to  be,  to  meet  such  accidents.  I  must 
ask  you  kindly  to  tell  her,  when  you  return  her  gift, 
that  now  I  have  done  the  picture  I  find  I  must  after 
all  keep  it  for  myself." 

"  Giving  no  reason  ?  " 

She  painted  away.    "  She'll  know  the  reason." 

Well,  by  this  time  I  knew  it  too;  I  knew  so  many 
things  that  I  fear  my  resistance  was  weak.  If  our 
wonderful  client  hadn't  been  his  wife  in  fact,  she  was 
not  to  be  helped  to  become  his  wife  in  fiction.  I  knew 
almost  more  than  I  can  say,  more  at  any  rate  than 
I  could  then  betray.  He  had  been  bound  in  common 
mercy  to  stand  by  my  friend,  and  he  had  basely  for 
saken  her.  This  indeed  brought  up  the  obscure,  into 
which  I  shyly  gazed.  ;<  Why,  even  granting  your 
theory,  should  you  grudge  her  the  portrait?  It  was 
painted  in  bitterness." 

'  Yes.     Without  that !  " 

"  It  wouldn't  have  come  ?  Precisely.  Is  it  in  bitter 
ness,  then,  you'll  keep  it  ?  " 

She  looked  up  from  her  canvas.  "  In  what  would 
you  keep  it?  " 

It  made  me  jump.  "  Do  you  mean  I  may?  '  Then 
I  had  my  idea.  "  I'd  give  you  her  price  for  it !  " 

Her  smile  through  her  glasses  was  beautiful.  "  And 
afterwards  make  it  over  to  her?  You  shall  have  it 
when  I  die."  With  which  she  came  away  from  her 
easel,  and  I  saw  that  I  was  staying  her  work  and 
should  properly  go.  So  I  put  out  my  hand  to  her.  "  It 
took — whatever  you  will ! — to  paint  it,"  she  said,  "  but 
I  shall  keep  it  in  joy."  I  could  answer  nothing  now 
— had  to  cease  to  pretend ;  the  thing  was  in  her  hands. 
For  a  moment  we  stood  there,  and  I  had  again  the 

91 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

sense,  melancholy  and  final,  of  her  being,  as  it  were, 
remotely  glazed  and  fixed  into  what  she  had  done. 
"  He's  taken  from  me,  and  for  all  those  years  he's  kept. 
Then  she  herself,  by  a  prodigy !  "  She  lost  her 
self  again  in  the  wonder  of  it. 

"  Unwittingly  gives  him  back?  " 

She  fairly,  for  an  instant  over  the  marvel,  closed  her 
eyes.  "  Gives  him  back." 

Then  it  was  I  saw  how  he  would  be  kept!  But  it 
was  the  end  of  my  vision.  I  could  only  write,  rueful 
ly  enough,  to  Mrs.  Bridgenorth,  whom  I  never  met 
again,  but  of  whose  death — preceding  by  a  couple  of 
years  Mary  Tredick's — I  happened  to  hear.  This  is 
an  old  man's  tale.  I  have  inherited  the  picture,  in  the 
deep  beauty  of  which,  however,  darkness  still  lurks. 
No  one,  strange  to  say,  has  ever  recognised  the  model, 
but  everyone  asks  his  name.  I  don't  even  know  it. 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 


I  NOTE  it  as  a  wonderful  case  of  its  kind — the  finest 
of  all  perhaps,  in  fact,  that  I  have  ever  chanced  to 
encounter.  The  kind,  moreover,  is  the  greatest  kind, 
the  roll  recruited,  for  our  high  esteem  and  emulation, 
from  history  and  fiction,  legend  and  song.  In  the  way 
of  service  and  sacrifice  for  love  I've  really  known  noth 
ing  go  beyond  it.  However,  you  can  judge.  My  own 
sense  of  it  happens  just  now  to  be  remarkably  rounded 
off  by  the  sequel — more  or  less  looked  for  on  her  part 
— of  the  legal  step  taken  by  Mrs.  Brivet.  I  hear  from 
America  that,  a  decent  interval  being  held  to  have 
elapsed  since  her  gain  of  her  divorce,  she  is  about  to 
marry  again — an  event  that  will,  it  would  seem,  put 
an  end  to  any  question  of  the  disclosure  of  the  real 
story.  It's  this  that's  the  real  story,  or  will  be,  with 
nothing  wanting,  as  soon  as  I  shall  have  heard  that  her 
husband  (who,  on  his  side,  has  only  been  waiting  for 
her  to  move  first)  has  sanctified  his  union  with  Mrs. 
Cavenham. 


SHE  was,  of  course,  often  in  and  out,  Mrs.  Cavenham, 
three  years  ago,  when  I  was  painting  her  portrait ;  and 
the  more  so  that  I  found  her,  I  remember,  one  of  those 
comparatively  rare  sitters  who  present  themselves  at 
odd  hours,  turn  up  without  an  appointment.  The  thing 
is  to  get  most  women  to  keep  those  they  do  make; 
but  she  used  to  pop  in,  as  she  called  it,  on  the  chance, 

93 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

letting  me  know  that  if  I  had  a  moment  free  she  was 
quite  at  my  service.  When  I  hadn't  the  moment  free 
she  liked  to  stay  to  chatter,  and  she  more  than  once 
expressed  to  me,  I  recollect,  her  theory  that  an  artist 
really,  for  the  time,  could  never  see  too  much  of  his 
model.  I  must  have  shown  her  rather  frankly  that  I 
understood  her  as  meaning  that  a  model  could  never 
see  too  much  of  her  artist.  I  understood  in  fact  every 
thing,  and  especially  that  she  was,  in  Brivet's  absence, 
so  unoccupied  and  restless  that  she  didn't  know  what 
to  do  with  herself.  I  was  conscious  in  short  that  it 
was  he  who  would  pay  for  the  picture,  and  that  gives, 
I  think,  the  measure  of  my  enlightenment.  If  I  took 
such  pains  and  bore  so  with  her  folly,  it  was  funda 
mentally  for  Brivet. 

I  was  often  at  that  time,  as  I  had  often  been  before, 
occupied — for  various  "  subjects  " — with  Mrs.  Dun- 
dene,  in  connection  with  which  a  certain  occasion  comes 
back  to  me  as  the  first  slide  in  the  lantern.  If  I  had 
invented  my  story  I  couldn't  have  made  it  begin  better 
than  with  Mrs.  Cavenham's  irruption  during  the  pres 
ence  one  morning  of  that  lady.  My  door,  by  some 
chance,  had  been  unguarded,  and  she  was  upon  us  with 
out  a  warning.  This  was  the  sort  of  thing  my  model 
hated — the  one,  I  mean,  who,  after  all,  sat  mainly 
to  oblige ;  but  I  remember  how  well  she  behaved.  She 
was  not  dressed  for  company,  though  indeed  a  dress 
was  never  strictly  necessary  to  her  best  effect.  I  re 
call  that  I  had  a  moment  of  uncertainty,  but  I  must 
have  dropped  the  name  of  each  for  the  other,  as  it  was 
Mrs.  Cavenham's  line  always,  later  on,  that  I  had  made 
them  acquainted;  and  inevitably,  though  I  wished  her 
not  to  stay  and  got  rid  of  her  as  soon  as  possible,  the 
two  women,  of  such  different  places  in  the  scale,  but 
of  such  almost  equal  beauty,  were  face  to  face  for  some 
minutes,  of  which  I  was  not  even  at  the  moment  un 
aware  that  they  made  an  extraordinary  use  for  mutual 

94 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

inspection.  It  was  sufficient;  they  from  that  instant 
knew  each  other. 

"  Isn't  she  lovely?  "  I  remember  asking — and  quite 
without  the  spirit  of  mischief — when  I  came  back  from 
restoring  my  visitor  to  her  cab. 

"  Yes,  awfully  pretty.     But  I  hate  her." 

"  Oh,"  I  laughed,  "  she's  not  so  bad  as  that." 

"  Not  so  handsome  as  I,  you  mean  ?  "  And  my 
sitter  protested.  "  It  isn't  fair  of  you  to  speak  as  if  I 
were  one  of  those  who  can't  bear  even  at  the  worst — 
or  the  best — another  woman's  looks.  I  should  hate 
her  even  if  she  were  ugly." 

"  But  what  have  you  to  do  with  her?  " 

She  hesitated;  then  with  characteristic  looseness: 
"  What  have  I  to  do  with  anyone?  " 

"  Well,  there's  no  one  else  I  know  of  that  you  do 
hate." 

"  That  shows,"  she  replied,  "  how  good  a  reason 
there  must  be,  even  if  I  don't  know  it  yet." 

She  knew  it  in  the  course  of  time,  but  I  have  never 
seen  a  reason,  I  must  say,  operate  so  little  for  relief. 
As  a  history  of  the  hatred  of  Alice  Dundene  my  anec 
dote  becomes  wondrous  indeed.  Meanwhile,  at  any 
rate,  I  had  Mrs.  Cavenham  again  with  me  for  her  reg 
ular  sitting,  and  quite  as  curious  as  I  had  expected  her 
to  be- about  the  person  of  the  previous  time. 

"  Do  you  mean  she  isn't,  so  to  speak,  a  lady?  "  she 
asked  after  I  had,  for  reasons  of  my  own,  fenced  a 
little.  "  Then  if  she's  not  '  professional '  either,  what 
is  she?" 

"  Well,"  I  returned  as  I  got  at  work,  "  she  escapes, 
to  my  mind,  any  classification  save  as  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  good-natured  of  women." 

"  I  see  her  beauty,"  Mrs.  Cavenham  said.  "  It's 
immense.  Do  you  mean  that  her  good-nature's  as 
great?" 

I  had  to  think  a  little.    "  On  the  whole,  yes." 

95 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Then  I  understand.  That  represents  a  greater 
quantity  than  /,  I  think,  should  ever  have  occasion 
for." 

"  Oh,  the  great  thing's  to  be  sure  to  have  enough," 
I  growled. 

But  she  laughed  it  off.  "  Enough,  certainly,  is  as 
good  as  a  feast!  " 

It  was — I  forget  how  long,  some  months — after  this 
that  Frank  Brivet,  whom  I  had  not  seen  for  two  years, 
knocked  again  at  my  door.  I  didn't  at  all  object  to 
him  at  my  other  work  as  I  did  to  Mrs.  Cavenham,  but 
it  \vas  not  till  he  had  been  in  and  out  several  times 
that  Alice — which  is  what  most  people  still  really  call 
her — chanced  to  see  him  and  received  in  such  an  ex 
traordinary  way  the  impression  that  was  to  be  of  such 
advantage  to  him.  She  had  been  obliged  to  leave  me 
that  day  before  he  went — though  he  stayed  but  a  few 
minutes  later;  and  it  was  not  till  the  next  time  we 
were  alone  together  that  I  was  struck  with  her  sudden 
interest,  which  became  frankly  pressing.  I  had  met 
her,  to  begin  with,  expansively  enough. 

"  An  American  ?  But  what  sort — don't  you  know  ? 
There  are  so  many." 

I  didn't  mean  it  as  an  offence,  but  in  the  matter  of 
men,  and  though  her  acquaintance  with  them  is  so 
large,  I  always  simplify  with  her.  "  The  sort.  He's 
rich." 

"And  how  rich?" 

"  Why,  as  an  American.     Disgustingly." 

I  told  her  on  this  occasion  more  about  him,  but  it 
was  on  that  fact,  I  remember,  that,  after  a  short  silence, 
she  brought  out  with  a  sigh :  "  Well,  I'm  sorry.  I 
should  have  liked  to  love  him  for  himself." 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 


II 

QUITE  apart  from  having  been  at  school  with  him,  I'm 
conscious — though  at  times  he  so  puts  me  out — that 
I've  a  taste  for  Frank  Brivet.  I'm  quite  aware,  by  the 
same  token — and  even  if  when  a  man's  so  rich  it's  dif 
ficult  to  tell — that  he's  not  everyone's  affinity.  I  was 
struck,  at  all  events,  from  the  first  of  the  affair,  with 
the  way  he  clung  to  me  and  seemed  inclined  to  haunt 
my  studio.  He's  fond  of  art,  though  he  has  some 
awful  pictures,  and  more  or  less  understands  mine; 
but  it  wasn't  this  that  brought  him.  Accustomed  as 
I  was  to  notice  what  his  wealth  everywhere  does  for 
him,  I  was  rather  struck  with  his  being  so  much  thrown 
upon  me  and  not  giving  London — the  big  fish  that 
rises  so  to  the  hook  baited  with  gold — more  of  a  chance 
to  perform  to  him.  I  very  soon,  however,  understood. 
He  had  his  reasons  for  wishing  not  to  be  seen  much 
with  Mrs.  Cavenham,  and,  as  he  was  in  love  with  her, 
felt  the  want  of  some  machinery  for  keeping  tempo 
rarily  away  from  her.  I  was  his  machinery,  and,  when 
once  I  perceived  this,  was  willing  enough  to  turn  his 
wheel.  His  situation,  moreover,  became  interesting 
from  the  moment  I  fairly  grasped  it,  which  he  soon  en 
abled  me  to  do.  His  old  reserve  on  the  subject  of 
Mrs.  Brivet  went  to  the  winds,  and  it's  not  my  fault 
if  I  let  him  see  how  little  I  was  shocked  by  his  confi 
dence.  His  marriage  had  originally  seemed  to  me  to 
require  much  more  explanation  than  anyone  could 
give,  and  indeed  in  the  matter  of  women  in  general, 
I  confess,  I've  never  seized  his  point  of  view.  His  in 
clinations  are  strange,  and  strange,  too,  perhaps,  his 
indifferences.  Still,  I  can  enter  into  some  of  his  aver 
sions,  and  I  agreed  with  him  that  his  wife  was 
odious. 

"  She  has  hitherto,  since  we  began  practically  to  live 

97 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

apart,"  he  said,  "  mortally  hated  the  idea  of  doing  any 
thing  so  pleasant  for  me  as  to  divorce  me.  But  I've 
reason  to  believe  she  has  now  changed  her  mind. 
She'd  like  to  get  clear." 

I  waited  a  moment.    "  For  a  man  ?  " 
"  Oh,  such  a  jolly  good  one !    Remson  Sturch." 
I  wondered.    "  Do  you  call  him  good?  " 
"  Good  for  her.     If  she  only  can  be  got  to  be — 
which   it  oughtn't  to  be  difficult  to  make  her — fool 
enough  to  marry  him,  he'll  give  her  the  real  size  of 
his  foot,  and  I  shall  be  avenged  in  a  manner  positively 
ideal." 

'  Then  will  she  institute  proceedings  ?  " 
"  She  can't,  as  things  stand.  She  has  nothing  to 
go  upon.  I've  been,"  said  poor  Brivet,  "  I  positively 
have,  so  blameless."  I  thought  of  Mrs.  Cavenham, 
and,  though  I  said  nothing,  he  went  on  after  an  instant 
as  if  he  knew  it.  'l  They  can't  put  a  finger.  I've  been 
so  d — d  particular." 

I  hesitated.  "  And  your  idea  is  now  not  to  be  par 
ticular  any  more?  " 

"  Oh,  about  her"  he  eagerly  replied,   "  always !  " 
On  which  I  laughed  out  and  he  coloured.     "  But  my 
idea  is  nevertheless,  at  present,"  he  went  on,  "  to  pave 
the  way ;  that  is,  I  mean,  if  I  can  keep  the  person  you're 
thinking  of  so  totally  out  of  it  that  not  a  breath  in 
the  whole  business  can  possibly  touch  her." 
"  I  see,"  I  reflected.     "  She  isn't  willing?  " 
He  stared.     "  To  be  compromised  ?    Why  the  devil 
should  she  be?  " 

"  Why  shouldn't  she — for  you?  Doesn't  she  love 
you?" 

'  Yes,  and  it's  because  she  does,  dearly,  that  I  don't 
feel  the  right  way  to  repay  her  is  by  spattering  her 
over." 

"  Yet  if  she  stands,"  I  argued,  "  straight  in  the 
splash !  " 

98 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

"  She  doesn't !  "  he  interrupted  me,  with  some  curt- 
ness.  "  She  stands  a  thousand  miles  out  of  it;  she 
stands  on  a  pinnacle ;  she  stands  as  she  stands  in  your 
charming  portrait — lovely,  lonely,  untouched.  And  so 
she  must  remain." 

"  It's  beautiful,  it's  doubtless  inevitable,"  I  returned 
after  a  little,  "  that  you  should  feel  so.  Only,  if  your 
wife  doesn't  divorce  you  for  a  woman  you  love,  I  don't 
quite  see  how  she  can  do  it  for  the  woman  you  don't." 

"Nothing  is  more  simple,"  he  declared;  on  which 
I  saw  he  had  figured  it  out  rather  more  than  I  thought. 
"  It  will  be  quite  enough  if  she  believes  I  love  her." 

"  If  the  lady  in  question  does — or  Mrs.  Brivet?  " 

"  Mrs.  Brivet — confound  her !  If  she  believes  I  love 
somebody  else.  I  must  have  the  appearance,  and  the 
appearance  must  of  course  be  complete.  All  I've  got 
to  do  is  to  take  up " 

"  To  take  up ?  "  I  asked,  as  he  paused. 

"  Well,  publicly,  with  someone  or  other ;  someone 
who  could  easily  be  squared.  One  would  undertake, 
after  all,  to  produce  the  impression." 

"  On  your  wife  naturally,  you  mean?  " 

"  On  my  wife,  and  on  the  person  concerned." 

I  turned  it  over  and  did  justice  to  his  ingenuity. 
"  But  what  impression  would  you  undertake  to  pro 
duce  on ?" 

"  Well?  "  he  inquired  as  I  just  faltered. 

"  On  the  person  not-  concerned.  How  would  the 
lady  you  just  accused  me  of  having  in  mind  be  affected 
toward  such  a  proceeding?  " 

He  had  to  think  a  little,  but  he  thought  with  success. 
"  Oh,  I'd  answer  for  her." 

"  To  the  other  lady  ?  "  I  laughed. 

He  remained  quite  grave.  "  To  myself.  She'd 
leave  us  alone.  As  it  would  be  for  her  good,  she'd  un 
derstand." 

I  was  sorry  for  him,  but  he  struck  me  as  artless. 

99 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Understand,  in  that  interest,  the  '  spattering '  of  an 
other  person?  " 

He  coloured  again,  but  he  was  sturdy.  "  It  must 
of  course  be  exactly  the  right  person — a  special  type. 
Someone  who,  in  the  first  place,"  he  explained, 
"  wouldn't  mind,  and  of  whom,  in  the  second,  she 
wouldn't  be  jealous." 

I  followed  perfectly,  but  it  struck  me  as  important 
all  round  that  we  should  be  clear.  "  But  wouldn't  the 
danger  be  great  that  any  woman  who  shouldn't  have 
that  effect — the  effect  of  jealousy — upon  her  wouldn't 
have  it  either  on  your  wife?  " 

"  Ah,"  he  acutely  returned,  "  my  wife  wouldn't  be 
warned.  She  wouldn't  be  '  in  the  know.' ' 

"  I  see."  I  quite  caught  up.  "  The  two  other  ladies 
distinctly  would." 

But  he  seemed  for  an  instant  at  a  loss.  "  Wouldn't 
it  be  indispensable  only  as  regards  one  ?  " 

'  Then  the  other  would  be  simply  sacrificed  ?  " 

"  She  would  be,"  Brivet  splendidly  put  it,  "  remu 
nerated.  I  was  pleased  even  with  the  sense  of  financial 
power  betrayed  by  the  way  he  said  it,  and  I  at  any  rate 
so  took  the  measure  of  his  intention  of  generosity  and 
his  characteristically  big  view  of  the  matter  that  this 
quickly  suggested  to  me  what  at  least  might  be  his  ex 
posure.  "  But  suppose  that,  in  spite  of  '  remunera 
tion/  this  secondary  personage  should  perversely  like 
you?  She  would  have  to  be  indeed,  as  you  say,  a 
special  type,  but  even  special  types  may  have  general 
feelings.  Suppose  she  should  like  you  too  much." 

It  had  pulled  him  up  a  little.  "  What  do  you  mean 
by  '  too  much  '  ?" 

"  Well,  more  than  enough  to  leave  the  case  quite  as 
simple  as  you'd  require  it." 

"  Oh,  money  always  simplifies.  Besides,  I  should 
make  a  point  of  being  a  brute."  And  on  my  laughing 
at  this :  "  I  should  pay  her  enough  lo  keep  her  down, 

100 


THE   SPECIAL  TYPE 

to  make  her  easy.  But  the  thing,"  he  went  on  with 
a  drop  back  to  the  less  mitigated  real — "  the  thing, 
hang  it !  is  first  to  find  her." 

"Surely,"  I  concurred;  "for  she  should  have  to 
lack,  you  see,  no  requirement  whatever  for  plausibility. 
She  must  be,  for  instance,  not  only  '  squareable,'  but 
—before  anything  else  even — awfully  handsome." 

"  Oh,  '  awfully  ' !  "  He  could  make  light  of  that, 
which  was  what  Mrs.  Cavenham  was. 

"  It  wouldn't  do  for  her,  at  all  events,"  I  maintained, 
"  to  be  a  bit  less  attractive  than 

"Well,  than  who?"  he  broke  in,  not  only  with  a 
comic  effect  of  disputing  my  point,  but  also  as  if  he 
knew  whom  I  was  thinking  of. 

Before  I  could  answer  him,  however,  the  door 
opened,  and  we  were  interrupted  by  a  visitor — a  visitor 
who,  on  the  spot,  in  a  flash,  primed  me  with  a  reply. 
But  I  had  of  course  for  the  moment  to  keep  it  to  my 
self.  "  Than  Mrs.  Dundene!  " 

III 

I  HAD  nothing  more  than  that  to  do  with  it,  but  before 
I  could  turn  round  it  was  done ;  by  which  I  mean  that 
Brivet,  whose  previous  impression  of  her  had,  for  some 
sufficient  reason,  failed  of  sharpness,  now  jumped 
straight  to  the  perception  that  here  to  his  hand  for  the 
solution  of  his  problem  was  the  missing  quantity  and 
the  appointed  aid.  They  were  in  presence  on  this  oc 
casion,  for  the  first  time,  half  an  hour,  during  which 
he  sufficiently  showed  me  that  he  felt  himself  to  have 
found  the  special  type.  He  was  certainly  to  that  ex 
tent  right  that  nobody  could — in  those  days  in  par 
ticular — without  a  rapid  sense  that  she  was  indeed 
"  special,"  spend  any  such  time  in  the  company  of  our 
extraordinary  friend.  I  couldn't  quarrel  with  his 
recognising  so  quickly  what  I  had  myself  instantly  rec- 

101 


THE  'BETTER   SORT 

ognised,  yet  if  it  did  in  truth  appear  almost  at  a  glance 
that  she  would,  through  the  particular  facts  of  situa 
tion,  history,  aspect,  tone,  temper,  beautifully  "  do," 
I  felt  from  the  first  so  affected  by  the  business  that  I 
desired  to  wash  my  hands  of  it.  There  was  something 
I  wished  to  say  to  him  before  it  went  further,  but 
after  that  I  cared  only  to  be  out  of  it.  I  may  as  well 
say  at  once,  however,  that  I  never  was  out  of  it;  for 
a  man  habitually  ridden  by  the  twin  demons  of  im 
agination  and  observation  is  never — enough  for  his 
peace — out  of  anything.  But  I  wanted  to  be  able  to 
apply  to  either,  should  anything  happen,  "  '  Thou  canst 
not  say  7  did  it ! '  What  might  in  particular  happen 
was  represented  by  what  I  said  to  Brivet  the  first  time 
he  gave  me  a  chance.  It  was  what  I  had  wished  before 
the  affair  went  further,  but  it  had  then  already  gone 
so  far  that  he  had  been  twice — as  he  immediately  let 
me  know — to  see  her  at  home.  He  clearly  desired  me 
to  keep  up  with  him,  which  I  was  eager  to  declare  im 
possible  ;  but  he  came  again  to  see  me  only  after  he 
had  called.  Then  I  instantly  made  my  point,  which 
was  that  she  was  really,  hang  it !  too  good  for  his  fell 
purpose. 

"  But,  my  dear  man,  my  purpose  is  a  sacred  one. 
And  if,  moreover,  she  herself  doesn't  think  she's  too 
good " 

"  Ah,"  said  I,  "  she's  in  love  with  you,  and  so  it 
isn't  fair." 

He  wondered.    "  Fair  to  me?" 

"  Oh,  I  don't  care  a  button  for  you !  What  I'm 
thinking  of  is  her  risk." 

"  And  what  do  you  mean  by  her  risk?  " 

"  Why,  her  finding,  of  course,  before  you've  done 
with  her,  that  she  can't  do  without  you." 

He  met  me  as  if  he  had  quite  thought  of  that.  "  Isn't 
it  much  more  my  risk  ?  " 

"  Ah,  but  you  take  it  deliberately,  walk  into  it  with 
1 02 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

your  eyes  open.     What  I  want  to  be  sure  of,  liking 
her  as  I  do,  is  that  she  fully  understands." 

He  had  been  moving  about  my  place  with  his  hands 
in  his  pockets,  and  at  this  he  stopped  short.  "  How 
much  do  you  like  her  ?  " 

"  Oh,  ten  times  more  than  she  likes  me ;  so  that 
needn't  trouble  you.  Does  she  understand  that  it  can 
be  only  to  help  somebody  else  ?  " 

"  Why,  my  dear  chap,  she's  as  sharp  as  a  steam- 
whistle." 

"  So  that  she  also  already  knows  who  the  other  per 
son  is  ?  " 

He  took  a  turn  again,  then  brought  out,  "  There's 
no  other  person  for  her  but  me.  Of  course,  as  yet, 
there  are  things  one  doesn't  say ;  I  haven't  set  straight 
to  work  to  dot  all  my  i's,  and  the  beauty  of  her,  as 
she's  really  charming — and  would  be  charming  in  any 
relation — is  just  exactly  that  I  don't  expect  to  have 
to.  We'll  work  it  out  all  right,  I  think,  so  that  what 
I  most  wanted  just  to  make  sure  of  from  you  was  what 
you've  been  good  enough  to  tell  me.  I  mean  that  you 
don't  object — for  yourself." 

I  could  with  philosophic  mirth  allay  that  scruple, 
but  what  I  couldn't  do  was  to  let  him  see  what  really 
most  worried  me.  It  stuck,  as  they  say,  in  my  crop 
that  a  woman  like — yes,  when  all  was  said  and  done 
— Alice  Dundene  should  simply  minister  to  the  con 
venience  of  a  woman  like  Rose  Cavenham.  "  But 
there's  one  thing  more."  This  was  as  far  as  I  could 
go.  "  I  may  take  from  you  then  that  she  not  only 
knows  it's  for  your  divorce  and  remarriage,  but  can 
fit  the  shoe  on  the  very  person?  " 

He  waited  a  moment.  "  Well,  you  may  take  from 
me  that  I  find  her  no  more  of  a  fool  than,  as  I  seem 
to  see,  many  other  fellows  have  found  her." 

I  too  was  silent  a  little,  but  with  a  superior  sense  of 
being  able  to  think  it  all  out  further  than  he.  "  She's 
magnificent!  " 

103 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Well,  so  am  I !  "  said  Brivet.  And  for  months 
afterward  there  was  much — in  fact  everything — in  the 
whole  picture  to  justify  his  claim.  I  remember  how  it 
struck  me  as  a  lively  sign  of  this  that  Mrs.  Cavenham, 
at  an  early  day,  gave  up  her  pretty  house  in  Wilton 
Street  and  withdrew  for  a  time  to  America.  That  was 
palpable  design  and  diplomacy,  but  I'm  afraid  that  I 
quite  as  much,  and  doubtless  very  vulgarly,  read  into 
it  that  she  had  had  money  from  Brivet  to  go.  I  even 
promised  myself,  I  confess,  the  entertainment  of  finally 
making  out  that,  whether  or  no  the  marriage  should 
come  off,  she  would  not  have  been  the  person  to  find 
the  episode  least  lucrative. 

She  left  the  others,  at  all  events,  completely  together, 
and  so,  as  the  plot,  with  this,  might  be  said  definitely 
to  thicken,  it  came  to  me  in  all  sorts  of  ways  that  the 
curtain  had  gone  up  on  the  drama.  It  came  to  me,  I 
hasten  to  add,  much  less  from  the  two  actors  themselves 
than  from  other  quarters — the  usual  sources,  which 
never  fail,  of  chatter;  for  after  my  friends'  direction 
was  fairly  taken  they  had  the  good  taste  on  either 
side  to  handle  it,  in  talk,  with  gloves,  not  to  expose 
it  to  what  I  should  have  called  the  danger  of  definition. 
I  even  seemed  to  divine  that,  allowing  for  needful  pre 
liminaries,  they  dealt  even  with  each  other  on  this 
same  unformulated  plane,  and  that  it  well  might  be 
that  no  relation  in  London  at  that  moment,  between 
a  remarkable  man  and  a  beautiful  woman,  had  more 
of  the  general  air  of  good  manners.  I  saw  for  a  long 
time,  directly,  but  little  of  them,  for  they  were  naturally 
much  taken  up,  and  Mrs.  Dundene  in  particular  inter 
mitted,  as  she  had  never  yet  done  in  any  complication 
of  her  chequered  career,  her  calls  at  my  studio.  As 
the  months  went  by  I  couldn't  but  feel — partly,  per 
haps,  for  this  very  reason — that  their  undertaking  an 
nounced  itself  as  likely  not  to  fall  short  of  its  aim.  I 
gathered  from  the  voices  of  the  air  that  nothing  what- 

104 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

ever  was  neglected  that  could  make  it  a  success,  and 
just  this  vision  it  was  that  made  me  privately  project 
wonders  into  it,  caused  anxiety  and  curiosity  often 
again  to  revisit  me,  and  led  me  in  fine  to  say  to  myself 
that  so  rich  an  effect  could  be  arrived  at  on  either  side 
only  by  a  great  deal  of  heroism.  As  the  omens  marked 
ly  developed  I  supposed  the  heroism  had  likewise  done 
so,  and  that  the  march  of  the  matter  was  logical  I  in 
ferred  from  the  fact  that  even  though  the  ordeal,  all 
round,  was  more  protracted  than  might  have  been 
feared,  Mrs.  Cavenham  made  no  fresh  appearance. 
This  I  took  as  a  sign  that  she  knew  she  was  safe — took 
indeed  as  the  feature  not  the  least  striking  of  the  sit 
uation  constituted  in  her  interest.  I  held  my  tongue, 
naturally,  about  her  interest,  but  I  watched  it  from  a 
distance  with  an  attention  that,  had  I  been  caught  in  the 
act,  might  have  led  to  a  mistake  about  the  direction 
of  my  sympathy.  I  had  to  make  it  my  proper  secret 
that,  while  I  lost  as  little  as  possible  of  what  was  being 
done  for  her,  I  felt  more  and  more  that  I  myself  could 
never  have  begun  to  do  it. 

IV 

SHE  came  back  at  last,  however,  and  one  of  the  first 
things  she  did  on  her  arrival  was  to  knock  at  my  door 
and  let  me  know  immediately,  to  smooth  the  way,  that 
she  was  there  on  particular  business.  I  was  not  to 
be  surprised — though  even  if  I  were  she  shouldn't 
mind — to  hear  that  she  wished  to  bespeak  from  me, 
on  the  smallest  possible  delay,  a  portrait,  full-length 
for  preference,  of  our  delightful  friend  Mr.  Brivet. 
She  brought  this  out  with  a  light  perfection  of  assur 
ance  of  which  the  first  effect — I  couldn't  help  it — was 
to  make  me  show  myself  almost  too  much  amused  for 
good  manners.  She  first  stared  at  my  laughter,  then 
wonderfully  joined  in  it,  looking  meanwhile  extraor- 

105 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

dinarily  pretty  and  elegant — more  completely  hand 
some  in  fact,  as  well  as  more  completely  happy,  than 
I  had  ever  yet  seen  her.  She  was  distinctly  the  better, 
I  quickly  saw,  for  what  was  being  done  for  her,  and 
it  was  an  odd  spectacle  indeed  that  while,  out  of  her 
sight  and  to  the  exclusion  of  her  very  name,  the  good 
work  went  on,  it  put  roses  in  her  cheeks  and  rings  on 
her  fingers  and  the  sense  of  success  in  her  heart.  What 
had  made  me  laugh,  at  all  events,  was  the  number  of 
other  ideas  suddenly  evoked  by  her  request,  two  of 
which,  the  next  moment,  had  disengaged  themselves 
with  particular  brightness.  She  wanted,  for  all  her 
confidence,  to  omit  no  precaution,  to  close  up  every 
issue,  and  she  had  acutely  conceived  that  the  posses 
sion  of  Brivet's  picture — full-length,  above  all! — 
would  constitute  for  her  the  strongest  possible  appear 
ance  of  holding  his  supreme  pledge.  If  that  had  been 
her  foremost  thought  her  second  then  had  been  that 
if  I  should  paint  him  he  would  have  to  sit,  and  that  in 
order  to  sit  he  would  have  to  return.  He  had  been  at 
this  time,  as  I  knew,  for  many  weeks  in  foreign  cities 
— which  helped  moreover  to  explain  to  me  that  Mrs. 
Cavenham  had  thought  it  compatible  with  her  safety 
to  reopen  her  London  house.  Everything  accordingly 
seemed  to  make  for  a  victory,  but  there  was  such  a 
thing,  her  proceeding  implied,  as  one's — at  least  as 
her — susceptibility  and  her  nerves.  This  question  of 
his  return  I  of  course  immediately  put  to  her;  on 
which  she  immediately  answered  that  it  was  expressed 
in  her  very  proposal,  inasmuch  as  this  proposal  was 
nothing  but  the  offer  that  Brivet  had  himself  made  her. 
The  thing  was  to  be  his  gift;  she  had  only,  he  had 
assured  her,  to  choose  her  artist  and  arrange  the  time ; 
and  she  had  amiably  chosen  me — chosen  me  for  the 
dates,  as  she  called  them,  immediately  before  us.  I 
doubtless — but  I  don't  care — give  the  measure  of  my 
native  cynicism  in  confessing  that  I  didn't  the  least 

1 06 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

avoid  showing  her  that  I  saw  through  her  game. 
''  Well,  I'll  do  him,"  I  said,  "  if  he'll  come  himself  and 
ask  me." 

She  wanted  to  know,  at  this,  of  course,  if  I  impugned 
her  veracity.  "  You  don't  believe  what  I  tell  you  ? 
You're  afraid  for  your  money?  " 

I  took  it  in  high  good-humour.  "  For  my  money 
not  a  bit." 

"For  what  then?" 

I  had  to  think  first  how  much  I  could  say,  which 
seemed  to  me,  naturally,  as  yet  but  little.  "  I  know 
perfectly  that  whatever  happens  Brivet  always  pays. 
But  let  him  come;  then  we'll  talk." 

"  Ah,  well,"  she  returned,  "  you'll  see  if  he  doesn't 
come."  And  come  he  did  in  fact — though  without 
a  word  from  myself  directly — at  the  end  of  ten  days ; 
on  which  we  immediately  got  to  work,  an  idea  highly 
favourable  to  it  having  meanwhile  shaped  itself  in 
my  own  breast.  Meanwhile  too,  however,  before  his 
arrival,  Mrs.  Cavenham  had  been  again  to  see  me, 
and  this  it  was  precisely,  I  think,  that  determined  my 
idea.  My  present  explanation  of  what  afresh  passed 
between  us  is  that  she  really  felt  the  need  to  build  up 
her  security  a  little  higher  by  borrowing  from  my  own 
vision  of  what  had  been  happening.  I  had  not,  she 
saw,  been  very  near  to  that,  but  I  had  been  at  least, 
during  her  time  in  America,  nearer  than  she.  And 
I  had  doubtless  somehow  "aggravated"  her  by  appear 
ing  to  disbelieve  in  the  guarantee  she  had  come  in  such 
pride  to  parade  to  me.  It  had  in  any  case  befallen 
that,  on  the  occasion  of  her  second  visit,  what  I  least 
expected  or  desired — her  avowal  of  being  "  in  the 
know  " — suddenly  went  too  far  to  stop.  When  she 
did  speak  she  spoke  with  elation.  "  Mrs.  Brivet  has 
filed  her  petition." 

"  For  getting  rid  of  him?  " 

"  Yes,  in  order  to  marry  again ;  which  is  exactly 
107 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

what  he  wants  her  to  do.  It's  wonderful  —  and,  in  a 
manner,  I  think,  quite  splendid  —  the  way  he  has  made 
it  easy  for  her.  He  has  met  her  wishes  handsomely 
—  obliged  her  in  every  particular." 

As  she  preferred,  subtly  enough,  to  put  it  all  as  if 
it  were  for  the  sole  benefit  of  his  wife,  I  was  quite 
ready  for  this  tone;  but  I  privately  defied  her  to  keep 
it  up.  ''  Well,  then,  he  hasn't  laboured  in  vain." 

"  Oh,  it  couldn't  have  been  in  vain.  What  has  hap 
pened  has  been  the  sort  of  thing  that  she  couldn't  pos 
sibly  fail  to  act  upon." 

"  Too  great  a  scandal,  eh  ?  " 

She  but  just  paused  at  it.  "  Nothing  neglected,  cer 
tainly,  or  omitted.  He  was  not  the  man  to  undertake 


"  And  not  put  it  through  ?  No,  I  should  say  he 
wasn't  the  man.  In  any  case  he  apparently  hasn't  been. 
But  he  must  have  found  the  job— 

"  Rather  a  bore?  "  she  asked  as  I  had  hesitated. 

:<  Well,  not  so  much  a  bore  as  a  delicate  matter." 

She  seemed  to  demur.    "  Delicate?  " 

"  Why,  your  sex  likes  him  so." 

"  But  isn't  just  that  what  has  made  it  easy?  " 

"  Easy  for  him  —  yes,"  I  after  a  moment  admitted. 

But  it  wasn't  what  she  meant.  "  And  not  difficult, 
also,  for  them." 

This  was  the  nearest  approach  I  was  to  have  heard 
her  make,  since  the  day  of  the  meeting  of  the  two 
women  at  my  studio,  to  naming  Mrs.  Dundene.  She 
never,  to  the  end  of  the  affair,  came  any  closer  to  her 
in  speech  than  by  the  collective  and  promiscuous  plural 
pronoun.  There  might  have  been  a  dozen  of  them, 
and  she  took  cognizance,  in  respect  to  them,  only  of 
quantity.  It  was  as  if  it  had  been  a  way  of  showing 
how  little  of  anything  else  she  imputed.  Quality,  as 
distinguished  from  quantity,  was  what  she  had.  "  Oh, 
I  think,"  I  said,  "  that  we  can  scarcely  speak  for  them." 

108 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

"  Why  not?  They  must  certainly  have  had  the  most 
beautiful  time.  Operas,  theatres,  suppers,  dinners, 
diamonds,  carriages,  journeys  hither  and  yon  with  him, 
poor  dear,  telegrams  sent  by  each  from  everywhere 
to  everywhere  and  always  lying  about,  elaborate  ar 
rivals  and  departures  at  stations  for  everyone  to  see, 
and,  in  fact,  quite  a  crowd  usually  collected — as  many 
witnesses  as  you  like.  "  Then,"  she  wound  up,  "  his 
brougham  standing  always — half  the  day  and  half  the 
night — at  their  doors.  He  has  had  to  keep  a  brougham, 
and  the  proper  sort  of  man,  just  for  that  alone.  In 
other  words  unlimited  publicity." 

"  I  see.  What  more  can  they  have  wanted?  Yes," 
I  pondered,  "  they  like,  for  the  most  part,  we  suppose, 
a  studied,  outrageous  affichage,  and  they  must  have 
thoroughly  enjoyed  it." 

"  Ah,  but  it  was  only  that." 

I  wondered.    "  Only  what  ?  " 

"  Only  affiche.  Only  outrageous.  Only  the  form  of 
— well,  of  what  would  definitely  serve.  He  never  saw 
them  alone." 

I  wondered — or  at  least  appeared  to — still  more. 
"Never?" 

"  Never.  Never  once."  She  had  a  wonderful  air  of 
answering  for  it.  "  I  know." 

I  saw  that,  after  all,  she  really  believed  she  knew, 
and  I  had  indeed,  for  that  matter,  to  recognise  that  I 
myself  believed  her  knowledge  to  be  sound.  Only  there 
went  with  it  a  complacency,  an  enjoyment  of  having 
really  made  me  see  what  could  be  done  for  her,  so  little 
to  my  taste  that  for  a  minute  or  two  I  could  scarce 
trust  myself  to  speak :  she  looked  somehow,  as  she  sat 
there,  so  lovely,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  her  loveliness — or 
perhaps  even  just  because  of  it — sc  smugly  selfish; 
she  put  it  to  me  with  so  small  a  consciousness  of  any 
thing  but  her  personal  triumph  that,  while  she  had  kept 
her  skirts  clear,  her  name  unuttered  and  her  reputation 

109 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

untouched,  "  they  "  had  been  in  it  even  more  than  her 
success  required.  It  was  their  skirts,  their  name  and 
their  reputation  that,  in  the  proceedings  at  hand,  would 
bear  the  brunt.  It  wras  only  after  waiting  a  wrhile  that 
I  could  at  last  say :  "  You're  perfectly  sure  then  of 
Mrs.  Brivet's  intention  ?  " 

"  Oh,  we've  had  formal  notice." 

"  And  he's  himself  satisfied  of  the  sufficiency ?  " 

"  Of  the  sufficiency ?" 

"  Of  what  he  has  done." 

She  rectified.     "  Of  what  he  has  appeared  to  do." 

'  That  is  then  enough?" 

"  Enough,"  she  laughed,  "  to  send  him  to  the  gal 
lows  !  "  To  which  I  could  only  reply  that  all  was  well 
that  ended  well. 


ALL  for  me,  however,  as  it  proved,  had  not  ended  yet. 
Brivet,  as  I  have  mentioned,  duly 'reappeared  to  sit  for 
me,  and  Mrs.  Cavenham,  on  his  arrival,  as  consistently 
went  abroad.  He  confirmed  to  me  that  lady's  news 
of  how  he  had  "  fetched,"  as  he  called  it,  his  wife — 
let  me  know,  as  decently  owing  to  me  after  what  had 
passed,  on  the  subject,  between  us,  that  the  forces  set 
in  motion  had  logically  operated ;  but  he  made  no  other 
allusion  to  his  late  accomplice — for  I  now  took  for 
granted  the  close  of  the  connection — than  was  conveyed 
in  this  intimation.  He  spoke — and  the  effect  was  almost 
droll — as  if  he  had  had,  since  our  previous  meeting, 
a  busy  and  responsible  year  and  wound  up  an  affair 
(as  he  was  accustomed  to  wind  up  affairs)  involving 
a  mass  of  detail ;  he  even  dropped  into  occasional  rem 
iniscence  of  what  he  had  seen  and  enjoyed  and  disliked 
during  a  recent  period  of  rather  far-reaching  advent 
ure;  but  he  stopped  just  as  short  as  Mrs.  Cavenham 
had  done — and.  indeed,  much  shorter  than  she — of  in- 

no 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

troducing  Mrs.  Dundene  by  name  into  our  talk.  And 
what  was  singular  in  this,  I  soon  saw,  was — apart  from 
a  general  discretion — that  he  abstained  not  at  all  be 
cause  his  mind  was  troubled,  but  just  because,  on  the 
contrary,  it  was  so  much  at  ease.  It  was  perhaps  even 
more  singular  still,  meanwhile,  that,  though  I  had 
scarce  been  able  to  bear  Mrs.  Cavenham's  manner  in 
this  particular,  I  found  I  could  put  up  perfectly  with 
that  of  her  friend.  She  had  annoyed  me,  but  he  didn't 
— I  give  the  inconsistency  for  what  it  is  worth.  The 
obvious  state  of  his  conscience  had  always  been  a  strong 
point  in  him  and  one  that  exactly  irritated  some  people 
as  much  as  it  charmed  others;  so  that  if,  in  general, 
it  was  positively,  and  in  fact  quite  aggressively  ap 
proving,  this  monitor,  it  had  never  held  its  head  so 
high  as  at  the  juncture  of  which  I  speak.  I  took  all 
this  in  with  eagerness,  for  I  saw  how  it  would  play 
into  my  work.  Seeking  as  I  always  do,  instinctively, 
to  represent  sitters  in  the  light  of  the  thing,  whatever 
it  may  be,  that  facially,  least  wittingly  or  responsibly, 
gives  the  pitch  of  their  aspect,  I  felt  immediately  that 
I  should  have  the  clue  for  making  a  capital  thing  of 
Brivet  were  I  to  succeed  in  showing  him  in  just  this 
freshness  of  his  cheer.  His  cheer  was  that  of  his  being 
able  to  say  to  himself  that  he  had  got  all  he  wanted 
precisely  as  he  wanted :  without  having  harmed  a  fly. 
He  had  arrived  so  neatly  where  most  men  arrive  be 
smirched,  and  what  he  seemed  to  cry  out  as  he  stood 
before  my  canvas — wishing  everyone  well  all  round — 
was :  "  See  how  clever  and  pleasant  and  practicable, 
how  jolly  and  lucky  and  rich  I've  been ! "  I  de 
termined,  at  all  events,  that  I  would  make  some  such 
characteristic  words  as  these  cross,  at  any  cost,  the 
footlights,  as  it  were,  of  my  frame. 

Well,  I  can't  but  feel  to  this  hour  that  I  really  hit 
my  nail — that  the  man  is  fairly  painted  in  the  light 
and  that  the  work  remains  as  yet  my  high-water  mark. 

in 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

He  himself  was  delighted  with  it — and  all  the  more,  I 
think,  that  before  it  was  finished  he  received  from 
America  the  news  of  his  liberation.  He  had  not  de 
fended  the  suit — as  to  which  judgment,  therefore,  had 
been  expeditiously  rendered;  and  he  was  accordingly 
free  as  air  and  with  the  added  sweetness  of  every  aug 
mented  appearance  that  his  wife  was  herself  blindly 
preparing  to  seek  chastisement  at  the  hands  of  destiny. 
There  being  at  last  no  obstacle  to  his  open  association 
with  Mrs.  Cavenham,  he  called  her  directly  back  to 
London  to  admire  my  achievement,  over  which,  from 
the  very  first  glance,  she  as  amiably  let  herself  go.  It 
was  the  very  view  of  him  she  had  desired  to  possess; 
it  was  the  dear  man  in  his  intimate  essence  for  those 
who  knew  him;  and  for  any  one  who  should  ever  be 
deprived  of  him  it  would  be  the  next  best  thing  to  the 
sound  of  his  voice.  We  of  course  by  no  means  lin 
gered,  however,  on  the  contingency  of  privation,  which 
was  promptly  swept  away  in  the  rush  of  Mrs.  Caven- 
ham's  vision  of  how  straight  also,  above  and  beyond, 
I  had,  as  she  called  it,  attacked.  I  couldn't  quite  my 
self,  I  fear,  tell  how  straight,  but  Mrs.  Cavenham  per 
fectly  could,  and  did,  for  everybody:  she  had  at  her 
fingers'  ends  all  the  reasons  why  the  thing  would  be 
a  treasure  even  for  those  who  had  never  seen  "  Frank." 
I  had  finished  the  picture,  but  was,  according  to  my 
practice,  keeping  it  near  me  a  little,  for  afterthoughts, 
when  I  received  from  Mrs.  Dundene  the  first  visit  she 
had  paid  me  for  many  a  month.  "  I've  come,"  she  im 
mediately  said,  "  to  ask  you  a  favour  " ;  and  she  turned 
her  eyes,  for  a  minute,  as  if  contentedly  full  of  her 
thought,  round  the  large  workroom  she  already  knew 
so  well  and  in  which  her  beauty  had  really  rendered 
more  services  than  could  ever  be  repaid.  There  were 
studies  of  her  yet  on  the  walls;  there  were  others 
thrust  away  in  corners;  others  still  had  gone  forth 
from  where  she  stood  and  carried  to  far-away  places 

112 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

the  reach  of  her  lingering  look.  I  had  greatly,  almost 
inconveniently  missed  her,  and  I  don't  know  why  it 
was  that  she  struck  me  now  as  more  beautiful  than 
ever.  She  had  always,  for  that  matter,  had  a  way  of 
seeming;  each  time  a  little  different  and  a  little  better. 
Dressed  very  simply  in  black  materials,  feathers  and 
lace,  that  gave  the  impression  of  being  light  and  fine, 
she  had  indeed  the  air  of  a  special  type,  but  quite  as 
some  great  lady  might  have  had  it.  She  looked  like 
a  princess  in  Court  mourning.  Oh,  she  had  been  a 
case  for  the  petitioner — was  everything  the  other  side 
wanted !  "  Mr.  Brivet,"  she  went  on  to  say,  "  has 
kindly  offered  me  a  present.  I'm  to  ask  of  him  what 
ever  in  the  world  I  most  desire." 

I  knew  in  an  instant,  on  this,  what  was  coming,  but 
I  was  at  first  wholly  taken  up  with  the  simplicity  of 
her  allusion  to  her  late  connection.  Had  I  supposed 
that,  like  Brivet,  she  wouldn't  allude  to  it  at  all?  or 
had  I  stupidly  assumed  that  if  she  did  it  would  be 
with  ribaldry  and  rancour?  I  hardly  know;  I  only 
know  that  I  suddenly  found  myself  charmed  to  receive 
from  her  thus  the  key  of  my  own  freedom.  There  was 
something  I  wanted  to  say  to  her,  and  she  had  thus 
given  me  leave.  But  for  the  moment  I  only  re 
peated  as  with  amused  interest :  "  Whatever  in  the 
world ?" 

"  Whatever  in  all  the  world." 

"  But  that's  immense,  and  in  what  way  can  poor  / 
help ?" 

"  By  painting  him  for  me.    I  want  a  portrait  of  him." 

I  looked  at  her  a  moment  in  silence.  She  was  lovely. 
"  That's  what — '  in  all  the  world  ' — you've  chosen?  " 

"  Yes — thinking  it  over:  full-length.  I  want  it  for 
remembrance,  and  I  want  it  as  you  will  do  it.  It's  the 
only  thing  I  do  want." 

"Nothing  else?" 

"  Oh,  it's  enough."    I  turned  about — she  was  won- 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

derful.  I  had  whisked  out  of  sight  for  a  month  the 
picture  I  had  produced  for  Mrs.  Cavenham,  and  it  was 
now  completely  covered  with  a  large  piece  of  stuff.  I 
stood  there  a  little,  thinking  of  it,  and  she  went  on  as 
if  she  feared  I  might  be  unwilling.  "  Can't  you  do 
it?" 

It  showed  me  that  she  had  not  heard  from  him  of 
my  having  painted  him,  and  this,  further,  was  an  in 
dication  that,  his  purpose  effected,  he  had  ceased  to  see 
her.  "  I  suppose  you  know,"  I  presently  said,  "  what 
you've  done  for  him  ?  " 

"  Oh  yes;  it  was  what  I  wanted." 

"  It  was  what  he  wanted !  "  I  laughed. 

"  Well,  I  want  what  he  wants." 

"  Even  to  his  marrying  Mrs.  Cavenham  ?  " 

She  hesitated.  "  As  well  her  as  anyone,  from  the 
moment  he  couldn't  marry  me." 

"  It  was  beautiful  of  you  to  be  so  sure  of  that,"  I 
returned. 

"  How  could  I  be  anything  else  but  sure  ?  He  doesn't 
so  much  as  know  me !  "  said  Alice  Dundene. 

"  No,"  I  declared,  "  I  verily  believe  he  doesn't. 
There's  your  picture,"  I  added,  unveiling  my  work. 

She  was  amazed  and  delighted.    "  I  may  have  that?  ' 

"  So  far  as  I'm  concerned — absolutely." 

"  Then  he  had  himself  the  beautiful  thought  of  sit 
ting  for  me?  " 

I  faltered  but  an  instant.    "  Yes." 

Her  pleasure  in  what  I  had  done  was  a  joy  to  me. 
"  Why,  it's  of  a  truth !  It's  perfection." 

"  I  think  it  is." 

"  It's  the  whole  story.    It's  life." 

"That's  what  I  tried  for,"  I  said;  and  I  added  to 
myself:  "  Why  the  deuce  do  we?  " 

"  It  will  be  him  for  me,"  she  meanwhile  went  on. 
"  I  shall  live  with  it,  keep  it  all  to  myself,  and — do  you 
know  what  it  will  do? — it  will  seem  to  make  up." 

114 


THE   SPECIAL   TYPE 

"To  make  up?" 

"  I  never  saw  him  alone,"  said  Mrs.  Dundene. 

I  am  still  keeping  the  thing  to  send  to  her,  punctual 
ly,  on  the  day  he's  married ;  but  I  had  of  course,  on  my 
understanding  with  her,  a  tremendous  bout  with  Mrs. 
Cavenham,  who  protested  with  indignation  against  my 
"  base  treachery  "  and  made  to  Brivet  an  appeal  for 
redress  which,  enlightened,  face  to  face  with  the  mag 
nificent  humility  of  his  other  friend's  selection,  he 
couldn't,  for  shame,  entertain.  All  he  was  able  to  do 
was  to  suggest  to  me  that  I  might  for  one  or  other  of 
the  ladies,  at  my  choice,  do  him  again;  but  I  had  no 
difficulty  in  replying  that  my  best  was  my  best  and  that 
what  was  done  was  done.  He  assented  with  the  awk 
wardness  of  a  man  in  dispute  between  women,  and 
Mrs.  Cavenham  remained  furious.  "  Can't  *  they  ' — 
of  all  possible  things,  think ! — take  something  else  ?  " 

"  Oh,  they  want  him!  " 

"  Him  ?  "    It  was  monstrous. 

1  To  live  with,"  I  explained—"  to  make  up." 

'  To  make  up  for  what  ?  " 

"  Why,  you  know,  they  never  saw  him  alone." 


MRS.    MEDWIN 


"  \\7  ELL,  we  are  a  pair !  "  the  poor  lady's  visitor 
VV  broke  out  to  her,  at  the  end  of  her  explana 
tion,  in  a  manner  disconcerting  enough.  The  poor 
lady  was  Miss  Cutter,  who  lived  in  South  Audley 
Street,  where  she  had  an  "  upper  half  "  so  concise  that 
it  had  to  pass,  boldly,  for  convenient;  and  her  visitor 
was  her  half-brother,  whom  she  had  not  seen  for  three 
years.  She  was  remarkable  for  a  maturity  of  which 
every  symptom  might  have  been  observed  to  be  admir 
ably  controlled,  had  not  a  tendency  to  stoutness  just 
affirmed  its  independence.  Her  present,  no  doubt,  in 
sisted  too  much  on  her  past,  but  with  the  excuse,  suf 
ficiently  valid,  that  she  must  certainly  once  have  been 
prettier.  She  was  clearly  not  contented  with  once — • 
she  wished  to  be  prettier  again.  She  neglected  nothing 
that  could  produce  that  illusion,  and,  being  both  fair 
and  fat,  dressed  almost  wholly  in  black.  When  she 
added  a  little  colour  it  was  not,  at  any  rate,  to  her 
drapery.  Her  small  rooms  had  the  peculiarity  that 
everything  they  contained  appeared  to  testify  with 
vividness  to  her  position  in  society,  quite  as  if  they 
had  been  furnished  by  the  bounty  of  admiring  friends. 
They  were  adorned  indeed  almost  exclusively  with  ob 
jects  that  nobody  buys,  as  had  more  than  once  been 
remarked  by  spectators  of  her  own  sex,  for  herself,  and 
would  have  been  luxurious  if  luxury  consisted  main 
ly  in  photographic  portraits  slashed  across  with  sig- 

116 


MRS.    MEDWIN 

natures,  in  baskets  of  flowers  beribboned  with  the  cards 
of  passing  compatriots,  and  in  a  neat  collection  of  red 
volumes,  blue  volumes,  alphabetical  volumes,  aids  to 
London  lucidity,  of  every  sort,  devoted  to  addresses 
and  engagements.  To  be  in  Miss  Cutter's  tiny  draw 
ing-room,  in  short,  even  with  Miss  Cutter  alone — 
should  you  by  any  chance  have  found  her  so — was 
somehow  to  be  in  the  world  and  in  a  crowd.  It  was 
like  an  agency — it  bristled  with  particulars. 

This  was  what  the  tall,  lean,  loose  gentleman  loung 
ing  there  before  her  might  have  appeared  to  read  in  the 
suggestive  scene  over  which,  while  she  talked  to  him, 
his  eyes  moved  without  haste  and  without  rest.  "  Oh, 
come,  Mamie !  "  he  occasionally  threw  off ;  and  the 
words  were  evidently  connected  with  the  impression 
thus  absorbed.  His  comparative  youth  spoke  of  waste 
even  as  her  positive — her  too  positive — spoke  of  econ 
omy.  There  was  only  one  thing,  that  is,  to  make  up 
in  him  for  everything  he  had  lost,  though  it  was  dis 
tinct  enough  indeed  that  this  thing  might  sometimes 
serve.  It  consisted  in  the  perfection  of  an  indifference, 
an  indifference  at  the  present  moment  directed  to  the 
plea — a  plea  of  inability,  of  pure  destitution — with 
which  his  sister  had  met  him.  Yet  it  had  even  now  a 
wider  embrace,  took  in  quite  sufficiently  all  conse 
quences  of  queerness,  confessed  in  advance  to  the  false 
note  that,  in  such  a  setting,  he  almost  excruciatingly 
constituted.  He  cared  as  little  that  he  looked  at  mo 
ments  all  his  impudence  as  that  he  looked  all  his  sha'b- 
biness,  all  his  cleverness,  all  his  history.  These  differ 
ent  things  were  written  in  him — in  his  premature  bald 
ness,  his  seamed,  strained  face,  the  lapse  from  bravery 
of  his  long  tawny  moustache;  above  all,  in  his  easy, 
friendly,  universally  acquainted  eye,  so  much  too  so 
ciable  for  mere  conversation.  What  possible  relation 
with  him  could  be  natural  enough  to  meet  it?  He 
wore  a  scant,  rough  Inverness  cape  and  a  pair  of  black 

117 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

trousers,  wanting  in  substance  and  marked  with  the 
sheen  of  time,  that  had  presumably  once  served  for 
evening  use.  He  spoke  with  the  slowness  helplessly 
permitted  to  Americans — as  something  too  slow  to  be 
stopped — and  he  repeated  that  he  found  himself  asso 
ciated  with  Miss  Cutter  in  a  harmony  worthy  of  won 
der.  She  had  been  telling  him  not  only  that  she 
couldn't  possibly  give  him  ten  pounds,  but  that  his  un 
expected  arrival,  should  he  insist  on  being  much  in 
view,  might  seriously  interfere  with  arrangements  nec 
essary  to  her  own  maintenance ;  on  which  he  had  begun 
by  replying  that  he  of  course  knew  she  had  long  ago 
spent  her  money,  but  that  he  looked  to  her  now  exactly 
because  she  had,  without  the  aid  of  that  convenience, 
mastered  the  art  of  life. 

"  I'd  really  go  away  with  a  fiver,  my  dear,  if  you'd 
only  tell  me  how  you  do  it.  It's  no  use  saying  only,  as 
you've  always  said,  that  '  people  are  very  kind  to  you.' 
What  the  devil  are  they  kind  to  you  for?  " 

"  Well,  one  reason  is  precisely  that  no  particular  in 
convenience  has  hitherto  been  supposed  to  attach  to 
me.  I'm  just  what  I  am,"  said  Mamie  Cutter ;  "  noth 
ing  less  and  nothing  more.  It's  awkward  to  have  to 
explain  to  you,  which,  moreover,  I  really  needn't  in 
the  least.  I'm  clever  and  amusing  and  charming." 
She  was  uneasy  and  even  frightened,  but  she  kept  her 
temper  and  met  him  with  a  grace  of  her  own.  "  I 
don't  think  you  ought  to  ask  me  more  questions  than 
I  ask  you." 

"  Ah,  my  dear,"  said  the  odd  young  man,  "  I've  no 
mysteries.  Why  in  the  world,  since  it  was  what  you 
came  out  for  and  have  devoted  so  much  of  your  time 
to,  haven't  you  pulled  it  off?  Why  haven't  you  mar 
ried?" 

"  Why  haven't  you?  "  she  retorted.  "  Do  you  think 
that  if  I  had  it  would  have  been  better  for  you? — • 
that  my  husband  would  for  a  moment  have  put  up  with 

118 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

you  ?  Do  you  mind  my  asking  you  if  you'll  kindly  go 
now?  "  she  went  on  after  a  glance  at  the  clock.  "  I'm 
expecting  a  friend,  whom  I  must  see  alone,  on  a  matter 
of  great  importance 

"  And  my  being  seen  with  you  may  compromise 
your  respectability  or  undermine  your  nerve  ?  "  He 
sprawled  imperturbably  in  his  place,  crossing  again,  in 
another  sense,  his  long  black  legs  and  showing,  above 
his  low  shoes,  an  absurd  reach  of  parti-coloured  sock. 
"  I  take  your  point  well  enough,  but  mayn't  you  be 
after  all  quite  wrong?  If  you  can't  do  anything  for 
me  couldn't  you  at  least  do  something  with  me  ?  If  it 
comes  to  that,  I'm  clever  and  amusing  and  charming 
too!  I've  been  such  an  ass  that  you  don't  appreciate 
me.  But  people  like  me — I  assure  you  they  do.  They 
usually  don't  know  what  an  ass  I've  been;  they  only 
see  the  surface,  which " — and  he  stretched  himself 
afresh  as  she  looked  him  up  and  down — "  you  can  im 
agine  them,  can't  you,  rather  taken  with  ?  I'm  '  what 
I  am  '  too ;  nothing  less  and  nothing  more.  That's 
true  of  us  as  a  family,  you  see.  We  are  a  crew !  "  He 
delivered  himself  serenely.  His  voice  was  soft  and 
flat,  his  pleasant  eyes,  his  simple  tones  tending  to  the 
solemn,  achieved  at  moments  that  effect  of  quaintness 
which  is,  in  certain  connections,  socially  so  known  and 
enjoyed.  "  English  people  have  quite  a  weakness  for 
me — more  than  any  others.  I  get  on  with  them  beau 
tifully.  I've  always  been  with  them  abroad.  They 
think  me,"  the  young  man  explained,  "  diabolically 
American." 

'*  You !  "  Such  stupidity  drew  from  her  a  sigh  of 
compassion. 

Her  companion  apparently  quite  understood  it. 
"  Are  you  homesick,  Mamie  ?  "  he  asked,  with  wonder 
ing  irrelevance. 

The  manner  of  the  question  made  her  for  some  rea 
son,  in  spite  of  her  preoccupations,  break  into  a  laugh, 

119 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

A  shade  of  indulgence,  a  sense  of  other  things,  came 
back  to  her.     "  You  are  funny,  Scott !  " 

"  Well,"  remarked  Scott,  "  that's  just  what  I  claim. 
But  are  you  so  homesick?  "  he  spaciously  inquired,  not 
as  if  to  a  practical  end,  but  from  an  easy  play  of  intel 
ligence. 

"  I'm  just  dying  of  it !  "  said  Mamie  Cutter. 

"  Why,  so  am  I !  "  Her  visitor  had  a  sweetness  of 
concurrence. 

"  We're  the  only  decent  people,"  Miss  Cutter  de 
clared.  "  And  I  know.  You  don't — you  can't ;  and  I 
can't  explain.  Come  in,"  she  continued  with  a  return 
of  her  impatience  and  an  increase  of  her  decision,  "  at 
seven  sharp." 

She  had  quitted  her  seat  some  time  before,  and  now, 
to  get  him  into  motion,  hovered  before  him  while,  still 
motionless,  he  looked  up  at  her.  Something  intimate, 
in  the  silence,  appeared  to  pass  between  them — a  com 
munity  of  fatigue  and  failure  and,  after  all,  of  intelli 
gence.  There  was  a  final,  cynical  humour  in  it.  It 
determined  him,  at  any  rate,  at  last,  and  he  slowly 
rose,  taking  in  again  as  he  stood  there  the  testimony 
of  the  room.  He  might  have  been  counting  the  photo 
graphs,  but  he  looked  at  the  flowers  with  detachment. 
"Who's  coming?" 

"  Mrs.  Medwin." 

"American?" 

"Dear  no!" 

"  Then  what  are  you  doing  for  her?  " 

"  I  work  for  everyone,"  she  promptly  returned. 

"  For  everyone  who  pays  ?  So  I  suppose.  Yet  isn't 
it  only  we  who  do  pay?  " 

There  was  a  drollery,  not  lost  on  her,  in  the  way 
his  queer  presence  lent  itself  to  his  emphasised  plural. 
"  Do  you  consider  that  you  do?  " 

At  this,  with  his  deliberation,  he  came  back  to  his 
charming  idea.  "  Only  try  me,  and  see  if  I  can't  be 

120 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

made  to.  Work  me  in."  On  her  sharply  presenting 
her  back  he  stared  a  little  at  the  clock.  "  If  I  come  at 
seven  may  I  stay  to  dinner?  " 

It  brought  her  round  again.  "  Impossible.  I'm 
dining  out." 

"With  whom?" 

She  had  to  think.    "  With  Lord  Considine." 

"  Oh,  my  eye!  "  Scott  exclaimed. 

She  looked  at  him  gloomily.  "  Is  that  sort  of  tone 
what  makes  you  pay?  I  think  you  might  understand," 
she  went  on,  "  that  if  you're  to  sponge  on  me  success 
fully  you  mustn't  ruin  me.  I  must  have  some  remote 
resemblance  to  a  lady." 

"  Yes  ?  But  why  must  If  "  Her  exasperated  silence 
was  full  of  answers,  of  which,  however,  his  inimitable 
manner  took  no  account.  "  You  don't  understand  my 
real  strength;  I  doubt  if  you  even  understand  your 
own.  You're  clever,  Mamie,  but  you're  not  so  clever 
as  I  supposed.  However,"  he  pursued,  "  it's  out  of 
Mrs.  Medwin  that  you'll  get  it." 

"Get  what?" 

"  Why,  the  cheque  that  will  enable  you  to  assist 
me." 

On  this,  for  a  moment,  she  met  his  eyes.  "  If  you'll 
come  back  at  seven  sharp — not  a  minute  before,  and 
not  a  minute  after,  I'll  give  you  two  five-pound  notes." 

He  thought  it  over.  "  Whom  are  you  expecting  a 
minute  after?  " 

It  sent  her  to  the  window  with  a  groan  almost  of 
anguish,  and  she  answered  nothing  till  she  had  looked 
at  the  street.  "  If  you  injure  me,  you  know,  Scott", 
you'll  be  sorry." 

"  I  wouldn't  injure  you  for  the  world.  What  I 
want  to  do  in  fact  is  really  to  help  you,  and  I  promise 
you  that  I  won't  leave  you — by  which  I  mean  won't 
leave  London — till  I've  effected  something  really  pleas 
ant  for  you.  I  like  you,  Mamie,  because  I  like  pluck ; 

121 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

I  like  you  much  more  than  you  like  me.  I  like  you 
very,  very  much."  He  had  at  last  with  this  reached 
the  door  and  opened  it,  but  he  remained  with  his  hand 
on  the  latch.  "  What  does  Mrs.  Medwin  want  of 
you?  "  he  thus  brought  out. 

She  had  come  round  to  see  him  disappear,  and  in  the 
relief  of  this  prospect  she  again  just  indulged  him. 
"  The  impossible." 

He  waited  another  minute.  "  And  you're  going  to 
doit?" 

"  I'm  going  to  do  it,"  said  Mamie  Cutter. 

"  Well,  then,  that  ought  to  be  a  haul.  Call  it  three 
fivers !  "  he  laughed.  "  At  seven  sharp."  And  at  last 
he  left  her  alone. 

II 

Miss  CUTTER  waited  till  she  heard  the  house-door 
close;  after  which,  in  a  sightless,  mechanical  way,  she 
moved  about  the  room,  readjusting  various  objects  that 
he  had  not  touched.  It  was  as  if  his  mere  voice  and 
accent  had  spoiled  her  form.  But  she  was  not  left  too 
long  to  reckon  with  these  things,  for  Mrs.  Medwin 
was  promptly  announced.  This  lady  was  not,  more 
than  her  hostess,  in  the  first  flush  of  her  youth;  her 
appearance — the  scattered  remains  of  beauty  manip 
ulated  by  taste — resembled  one  of  the  light  repasts 
in  which  the  fragments  of  yesterday's  dinner  figure 
with  a  conscious  ease  that  makes  up  for  the  want  of 
presence.  She  was  perhaps  of  an  effect  still  too  im 
mediate  to  be  called  interesting,  but  she  was  candid, 
gentle  and  surprised — not  fatiguingly  surprised,  only 
just  in  the  right  degree ;  and  her  white  face — it  was 
too  white — with  the  fixed  eyes,  the  somewhat  touzled 
hair  and  the  Louis  Seize  hat,  might  at  the  end  of  the 
very  long  neck  have  suggested  the  head  of  a  princess 
carried,  in  a  revolution,  on  a  pike,  A  She  immediately 

122 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

took  up  the  business  that  had  brought  her,  with  the 
air,  however,  of  drawing  from  the  omens  then  discern 
ible  less  confidence  than  she  had  hoped.  The  complica 
tion  lay  in  the  fact  that  if  it  was  Mamie's  part  to  pre 
sent  the  omens,  that  lady  yet  had  so  to  colour  them 
as  to  make  her  own  service  large.  She  perhaps  over- 
coloured,  for  her  friend  gave  way  to  momentary 
despair. 

"  What  you  mean  is  then  that  it's  simply  impossi 
ble?" 

"Oh  no,"  said  Mamie,  with  a  qualified  emphasis. 
"  It's  possible:' 

11  But  disgustingly  difficult?  " 

"  As  difficult  as  you  like." 

"  Then  what  can  I  do  that  I  haven't  done?  " 

"  You  can  only  wait  a  little  longer." 

"  But  that's  just  what  I  have  done.  I've  done  noth 
ing  else.  I'm  always  waiting  a  little  longer !  " 

Miss  Cutter  retained,  in  spite  of  this  pathos,  her 
grasp  of  the  subject.  "  The  thing,  as  I've  told  you, 
is  for  you  first  to  be  seen." 

"  But  if  people  won't  look  at  me?  " 

"  They  will." 

"  They  will?  '      Mrs.  Medwin  was  eager. 

"  They  shall,"  her  hostess  went  on.  "  It's  their  only 
having  heard — without  having  seen." 

"  But  if  they  stare  straight  the  other  way?  "  Mrs. 
Medwin  continued  to  object.  "  You  can't  simply  go 
up  to  them  and  twist  their  heads  about." 

"  It's  just  what  I  can,"  said  Mamie  Cutter. 

But  her  charming  visitor,  heedless  for  the  moment 
of  this  attenuation,  had  found  the  way  to  put  it.  "  It's 
the  old  story.  You  can't  go  into  the  water  till  you 
swim,  and  you  can't  swim  till  you  go  into  the  water. 
I  can't  be  spoken  to  till  I'm  seen,  but  I  can't  be  seen 
till  I'm  spoken  to." 

She  met  this  lucidity,  Miss  Cutter,  with  but  an  in- 

123 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

stant's  lapse.  "You  say  I  can't  twist  their  heads  about. 
But  I  have  twisted  them." 

It  had  been  quietly  produced,  but  it  gave  her  com 
panion  a  jerk.  "  They  say  '  Yes  '  ?  " 

She  summed  it  up.    "  All  but  one.    She  says  '  No.'  ' 

Mrs.  Medwin  thought ;  then  jumped.  "  Lady 
Wantridge?" 

Miss  Cutter,  as  more  delicate,  only  bowed  admission. 
"  I  shall  see  her  either  this  afternoon  or  late  to-morrow. 
But  she  has  written." 

Her  visitor  wondered  again.  "  May  I  see  her  let 
ter?" 

"  No."  She  spoke  with  decision.  "  But  I  shall 
square  her." 

"Then  how?" 

"  Well  " — and  Miss  Cutter,  as  if  looking  upward 
for  inspiration,  fixed  her  eyes  awhile  on  the  ceiling — 
"  well,  it  will  come  to  me." 

Mrs.  Medwin  watched  her — it  was  impressive. 
"And  will  they  come  to  you — the  others?"  This 
question  drew  out  the  fact  that  they  would — so  far, 
at  least,  as  they  consisted  of  Lady  Edward,  Lady  Bell- 
house  and  Mrs.  Pouncer,  who  had  engaged  to  muster, 
at  the  signal  of  tea,  on  the  I4th — prepared,  as  it  were, 
for  the  worst.  There  was  of  course  always  the  chance 
that  Lady  Wantridge  might  take  the  field  in  such  force 
as  to  paralyse  them,  though  that  danger,  at  the  same 
time,  seemed  inconsistent  with  her  being  squared.  It 
didn't  perhaps  all  quite  ideally  hang  together;  but 
what  it  sufficiently  came  to  was  that  if  she  was  the 
one  who  could  do  most  for  a  person  in  Mrs.  Medwrin's 
position  she  was  also  the  one  who  could  do  most 
against.  It  would  therefore  be  distinctly  what  our 
friend  familiarly  spoke  of  as  "  collar-work."  The  ef 
fect  of  these  mixed  considerations  was  at  any  rate 
that  Mamie  eventually  acquiesced  in  the  idea,  hand 
somely  thrown  out  by  her  client,  that  she  should  have 

124 


MRS,   MEDWIN 

an  "  advance  "  to  go  on  with.  Miss  Cutter  confessed 
that  it  seemed  at  times  as  if  one  scarce  could  go  on; 
but  the  advance  was,  in  spite  of  this  delicacy,  still  more 
delicately  made — made  in  the  form  of  a  banknote,  sev 
eral  sovereigns,  some  loose  silver  and  two  coppers,  the 
whole  contents  of  her  purse,  neatly  disposed  by  Mrs. 
Medwin  on  one  of  the  tiny  tables.  It  seemed  to  clear 
the  air  for  deeper  intimacies,  the  fruit  of  which  was 
that  Mamie,  lonely,  after  all,  in  her  crowd,  and  always 
more  helpful  than  helped,  eventually  brought  out  that 
the  way  Scott  had  been  going  on  was  what  seemed 
momentarily  to  overshadow  her  own  power  to  do  so. 

"  I've  had  a  descent  from  him."  But  she  had  to 
explain.  "  My  half-brother  —  Scott  Homer.  A 
wretch." 

;' What  kind  of  a  wretch?" 

"  Every  kind.  I  lose  sight  of  him  at  times — he  dis 
appears  abroad.  But  he  always  turns  up  again,  worse 
than  ever." 

"Violent?" 

"  No." 

"Maudlin?" 

"  No." 

"Only  unpleasant?" 

"  No.  Rather  pleasant.  Awfully  clever — awfully 
travelled  and  easy." 

"  Then  what's  the  matter  with  him  ?  " 

Mamie  mused,  hesitated — seemed  to  see  a  wide  past. 
"  I  don't  know." 

"  Something  in  the  background  ? "  Then  as  her 
friend  was  silent,  "Something  queer  about  cards?" 
Mrs.  Medwin  threw  off. 

"  I  don't  know — and  I  don't  want  to !  " 

"  Ah  well,  I'm  sure  /  don't,"  Mrs.  Medwin  returned 
with  spirit.  The  note  of  sharpness  was  perhaps  also 
a  little  in  the  observation  she  made  as  she  gathered 
herself  to  go.  "  Do  you  mind  my  saying  something?  " 

125 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

Mamie  took  her  eyes  quickly  from  the  money  on  the 
little  stand.  "  You  may  say  what  you  like." 

"  I  only  mean  that  anything  awkward  you  may  have 
to  keep  out  of  the  way  does  seem  to  make  more  won 
derful,  doesn't  it,  that  you  should  have  got  just  where 
you  are?  I  allude,  you  know,  to  your  position." 

"  I  see."  Miss  Cutter  somewhat  coldly  smiled.  "  To 
my  power." 

"  So  awfully  remarkable  in  an  American." 

"  Ah,  you  like  us  so." 

Mrs.  Medwin  candidly  considered.  "But  we  don't, 
dearest." 

Her  companion's  smile  brightened.  "  Then  why  do 
you  come  to  me?  " 

"  Oh,  I  like  you!  "  Mrs.  Medwin  made  out. 

"  Then  that's  it.  There  are  no  '  Americans.'  It's  al 
ways  '  you.' ' 

"  Me  ?  "  Mrs.  Medwin  looked  lovely,  but  a  little 
muddled. 

"  Me!"  Mamie  Cutter  laughed.  "But  if  you  like 
me,  you  dear  thing,  you  can  judge  if  I  like  you."  She 
gave  her  a  kiss  to  dismiss  her.  "  I'll  see  you  again 
when  I've  seen  her." 

"Lady  Wantridge?  I  hope  so,  indeed.  I'll  turn 
up  late  to-morrow,  if  you  don't  catch  me  first.  Has 
it  come  to  you  yet?  "  the  visitor,  now  at  the  door,  went 
on. 

"  No;  but  it  will.     There's  time." 

"  Oh,  a  little  less  every  day !  " 

Miss  Cutter  had  approached  the  table  and  glanced 
again  at  the  gold  and  silver  and  the  note,  not  indeed 
absolutely  overlooked  the  two  coppers.  "  The  bal 
ance,"  she  put  it,  "  the  day  after  ?  " 

"  That  very  night,  if  you  like." 

"  Then  count  on  me." 

"  Oh,  if  I  didn't !  "    But  the  door  closed  on  the 

dark  idea.     Yearningly  then,   and  only  when  it  had 
done  so,  Miss  Cutter  took  up  the  money. 

126 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

She  went  out  with  it  ten  minutes  later,  and,  the  calls 
on  her  time  being  many,  remained  out  so  long  that  at 
half -past  six  she  had  not  come  back.  At  that  hour, 
on  the  other  hand,  Scott  Homer  knocked  at  her  door, 
where  her  maid,  who  opened  it  with  a  weak  pretence 
of  holding  it  firm,  ventured  to  announce  to  him,  as  a  les 
son  well  learnt,  that  he  had  not  been  expected  till  seven. 
No  lesson,  none  the  less,  could  prevail  against  his 
native  art.  He  pleaded  fatigue,  her,  the  maid's,  dread 
ful  depressing  London,  and  the  need  to  curl  up  some 
where.  If  she  would  just  leave  him  quiet  half  an  hour 
that  old  sofa  upstairs  would  do  for  it,  of  which  he  took 
quickly  such  effectual  possession  that  when,  five  min 
utes  later,  she  peeped,  nervous  for  her  broken  vow, 
into  the  drawing-room,  the  faithless  young  woman 
found  him  extended  at  his  length  and  peacefully  asleep. 

Ill 

THE  situation  before  Miss  Cutter's  return  developed 
in  other  directions  still,  and  when  that  event  took  place, 
at  a  few  minutes  past  seven,  these  circumstances  were, 
by  the  foot  of  the  stair,  between  mistress  and  maid, 
the  subject  of  some  interrogative  gasps  and  scared  ad 
missions.  Lady  Wantridge  had  arrived  shortly  after 
the  interloper,  and  wishing,  as  she  said,  to  wait,  had 
gone  straight  up  in  spite  of  being  told  he  was  lying 
down. 

"  She  distinctly  understood  he  was  there?  " 

"  Oh  yes,  ma'am;  I  thought  it  right  to  mention." 

"  And  what  did  you  call  him  ?  " 

"  Well,  ma'am,  I  thought  it  unfair  to  you  to  call 
him  anything  but  a  gentleman." 

Mamie  took  it  all  in,  though  there  might  well  be 
more  of  it  than  one  could  quickly  embrace.  "  But  if 
she  has  had  time,"  she  flashed,  "  to  find  out  he  isn't 
one?" 

127 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Oh,  ma'am,  she  had  a  quarter  of  an  hour." 

'  Then  she  isn't  with  him  still?  " 

"  No,  ma'am ;  she  came  down  again  at  last.  She 
rang,  and  I  saw  her  here,  and  she  said  she  wouldn't 
wait  longer." 

Miss  Cutter  darkly  mused.  "  Yet  had  already 
waited ?" 

"  Quite  a  quarter." 

"  Mercy  on  us !  "  She  began  to  mount.  Before 
reaching  the  top,  however,  she  had  reflected  that  quite 
a  quarter  was  long  if  Lady  Wantridge  had  only  been 
shocked.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  short  if  she  had 
only  been  pleased.  But  how  could  she  have  been 
pleased?  The  very  essence  of  their  actual  crisis  was 
just  that  there  was  no  pleasing  her.  Mamie  had  but 
to  open  the  drawing-room  door  indeed  to  perceive  that 
this  was  not  true  at  least  of  Scott  Homer,  who  was 
horribly  cheerful. 

Miss  Cutter  expressed  to  her  brother  without  reserve 
her  sense  of  the  constitutional,  the  brutal  selfishness 
that  had  determined  his  mistimed  return.  It  had  taken 
place,  in  violation  of  their  agreement,  exactly  at  the 
moment  when  it  was  most  cruel  to  her  that  he  should 
be  there,  and  if  she  must  now  completely  wash  her 
hands  of  him  he  had  only  himself  to  thank.  She  had 
come  in  flushed  with  resentment  and  for  a  moment 
had  been  voluble ;  but  it  would  have  been  striking  that, 
though  the  way  he  received  her  might  have  seemed 
but  to  aggravate,  it  presently  justified  him  by  causing 
their  relation  really  to  take  a  stride.  He  had  the  art 
of  confounding  those  who  would  quarrel  with  him  by 
reducing  them  to  the  humiliation  of  an  irritated  cu 
riosity. 

"  What  could  she  have  made  of  you  ?  "  Mamie  de 
manded. 

"  My  dear  girl,  she's  not  a  woman  who's  eager  to 
make  too  much  of  anything — anything,  I  mean,  that 

128 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

will  prevent  her  from  doing  as  she  likes,  what  she 
takes  into  her  head.  Of  course,"  he  continued  to  ex 
plain,  "  if  it's  something  she  doesn't  want  to  do,  she'll 
make  as  much  as  Moses." 

Mamie  wondered  if  that  was  the  way  he  talked  to 
her  visitor,  but  felt  obliged  to  own  to  his  acuteness. 
It  was  an  exact  description  of  Lady  Wantridge,  and 
she  was  conscious  of  tucking  it  away  for  future  use  in 
a  corner  of  her  miscellaneous  little  mind.  She  with 
held,  however,  all  present  acknowledgment,  only  ad 
dressing  him  another  question.  "  Did  you  really  get 
on  with  her  ?  " 

"  Have  you  still  to  learn,  darling — I  can't  help  again 
putting  it  to  you — that  I  get  on  with  everybody? 
That's  just  what  I  don't  seem  able  to  drive  into  you. 
Only  see  how  I  get  on  with  you." 

She  almost  stood  corrected.  "  What  I  mean  is,  of 
course,  whether " 

"  Whether  she  made  love  to  me  ?  Shyly,  yet — or 
because — shamefully?  She  would  certainly  have  liked 
awfully  to  stay." 

;<  Then  why  didn't  she?" 

"  Because,  on  account  of  some  other  matter — and  I 
could  see  it  was  true — she  hadn't  time.  Twenty  min 
utes — she  was  here  less — were  all  she  came  to  give  you. 
So  don't  be  afraid  I've  frightened  her  away.  She'll 
come  back." 

Mamie  thought  it  over.  "  Yet  you  didn't  go  with 
her  to  the  door  ?  " 

"  She  wouldn't  let  me,  and  I  know  when  to  do  what 
I'm  told — quite  as  much  as  what  I'm  not  told.  She 
wanted  to  find  out  about  me.  I  mean  from  your  little 
creature;  a  pearl  of  fidelity,  by  the  way." 

"  But  what  on  earth  did  she  come  up  for?  "  Mamie 
again  found  herself  appealing,  and,  just  by  that  fact, 
showing  her  need  of  help. 

"  Because  she  always  goes  up."  Then,  as,  in  the 
129 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

presence  of  this  rapid  generalisation,  to  say  nothing 
of  that  of  such  a  relative  altogether,  Miss  Cutter  could 
only  show  as  comparatively  blank :  "  I  mean  she  knows 
when  to  go  up  and  when  to  come  down.  She  has  in 
stincts;  she  didn't  know  whom  you  might  have  up 
here.  It's  a  kind  of  compliment  to  you  anyway.  Why, 
Mamie,"  Scott  pursued,  "  you  don't  know  the  curios 
ity  we  any  of  us  inspire.  You  wouldn't  believe  what 
I've  seen.  The  bigger  bugs  they  are  the  more  they're 
on  the  look-out." 

Mamie  still  followed,  but  at  a  distance.  "  The  look 
out  for  what  ?  " 

"  Why,  for  anything  that  will  help  them  to  live. 
You've  been  here  all  this  time  without  making  out  then, 
about  them,  what  I've  had  to  pick  out  as  I  can  ?  They're 
dead,  don't  you  see?  And  we're  alive." 

"  You  ?    Oh !  " — Mamie  almost  laughed  about  it. 

"  Well,  they're  a  worn-out  old  lot,  anyhow ;  they've 
used  up  their  resources.  They  do  look  out;  and  I'll 
do  them  the  justice  to  say  they're  not  afraid — not  even 
of  me !  "  he  continued  as  his  sister  again  showed  some 
thing  of  the  same  irony.  "  Lady  Wantridge,  at  any 
rate,  wasn't;  that's  what  I  mean  by  her  having  made 
love  to  me.  She  does  what  she  likes.  Mind  it,  you 
know."  He  was  by  this  time  fairly  teaching  her  to 
know  one  of  her  best  friends,  and  when,  after  it,  he 
had  come  back  to  the  great  point  of  his  lesson — that 
of  her  failure,  through  feminine  inferiority,  practically 
to  grasp  the  truth  that  their  being  just  as  they  were, 
he  and  she,  was  the  real  card  for  them  to  play — when 
he  had  renewed  that  reminder  he  left  her  absolutely 
in  a  state  of  dependence.  Her  impulse  to  press  him 
on  the  subject  of  Lady  Wantridge  dropped ;  it  was  as 
if  she  had  felt  that,  whatever  had  taken  place,  some 
thing  would  somehow  come  of  it.  She  was  to  be,  in 
a  manner,  disappointed,  but  the  impression  helped  to 
keep  her  over  to  the  next  morning,  when,  as  Scott  had 

130 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

foretold,  his  new  acquaintance  did  reappear,  explain 
ing  to  Miss  Cutter  that  she  had  acted  the  day  before 
to  gain  time  and  that  she  even  now  sought  to  gain  it 
by  not  waiting  longer.  What,  she  promptly  intimated 
she  had  asked  herself,  could  that  friend  be  thinking 
of  ?  She  must  show  where  she  stood  before  things  had 
gone  too  far.  If  she  had  brought  her  answer  without 
more  delay  she  wished  to  make  it  sharp.  Mrs.  Med- 
win?  Never!  "No,  my  dear — not  I.  There  I  stop." 
Mamie  had  known  it  would  be  "  collar-work,"  but 
somehow  now,  at  the  beginning,  she  felt  her  heart  sink. 
It  was  not  that  she  had  expected  to  carry  the  position 
with  a  rush,  but  that,  as  alwrays  after  an  interval,  her 
visitor's  defences  really  loomed — and  quite,  as  it  were, 
to  the  material  vision — too  large.  She  was  always 
planted  with  them,  voluminous,  in  the  very  centre  of 
the  passage;  was  like  a  person  accommodated  with 
a  chair  in  some  unlawful  place  at  the  theatre.  She 
wouldn't  move  and  you  couldn't  get  round.  Mamie's 
calculation  indeed  had  not  been  on  getting  round ;  she 
was  obliged  to  recognise  that,  too  foolishly  and  fondly, 
she  had  dreamed  of  producing  a  surrender.  Her  dream 
had  been  the  fruit  of  her  need ;  but,  conscious  that  she 
was  even  yet  unequipped  for  pressure,  she  felt,  almost 
for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  superficial  and  crude.  She 
was  to  be  paid — but  with  what  was  she,  to  that  end, 
to  pay?  She  had  engaged  to  find  an  answer  to  this 
question,  but  the  answer  had  not,  according  to  her 
promise,  "  come."  And  Lady  Wantridge  meanwhile 
massed  herself,  and  there  was  no  view  of  her  that  didn't 
show  her  as  verily,  by  some  process  too  obscure  to  be 
traced,  the  hard  depository  of  the  social  law.  She  was 
no  younger,  no  fresher,  no  stronger,  really,  than  any 
of  them;  she  was  only,  with  a  kind  of  haggard  fine 
ness,  a  sharpened  taste  for  life,  and,  with  all  sorts  of 
things  behind  and  beneath  her,  more  abysmal  and  more 
immoral,  more  secure  and  more  impertinent.  The 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

points  she  made  were  two  in  number.  One  was  that 
she  absolutely  declined;  the  other  was  that  she  quite 
doubted  if  Mamie  herself  had  measured  the  job.  The 
thing  couldn't  be  done.  But  say  it  could  be;  was 
Mamie  quite  the  person  to  do  it  ?  To  this  Miss  Cutter, 
with  a  sweet  smile,  replied  that  she  quite  understood 
how  little  she  might  seem  so.  "  I'm  only  one  of  the 
persons  to  whom  it  has  appeared  that  you  are." 
"  Then  who  are  the  others  ?  " 

"  Well,  to  begin  with,  Lady  Edward,  Lady  Bell- 
house  and  Mrs.  Pouncer." 

"  Do  you  mean  that  they'll  come  to  meet  her?  " 

"  I've  seen  them,  and  they've  promised." 

"To  come,  of  course,"  Lady  Wantridge  said,  "if  / 


come." 


Her  hostess  hesitated.  "  Oh,  of  course,  you  could 
prevent  them.  But  I  should  take  it  as  awfully  kind  of 
you  not  to.  WonJ't  you  do  this  for  me?"  Mamie 
pleaded. 

Her  friend  looked  about  the  room  very  much  as 
Scott  had  done.  "  Do  they  really  understand  what  it's 
for?  " 

"  Perfectly.    So  that  she  may  call." 

"  And  what  good  will  that  do  her  ?  " 

Miss  Cutter  faltered,  but  she  presently  brought  it 
out.  "  Of  course  what  one  hopes  is  that  you'll  ask 
her." 

"Ask  her  to  call?" 

"  Ask  her  to  dine.  Ask  her,  if  you'd  be  so  truly 
sweet,  for  a  Sunday,  or  something  of  that  sort, 
and  even  if  only  in  one  of  your  most  mixed  parties,  to 
Catchmore." 

Miss  Cutter  felt  the  less  hopeful  after  this  effort  in 
that  her  companion  only  showed  a  strange  good  nature. 
And  it  was  not  the  amiability  of  irony;  yet  it  was 
amusement.  "Take  Mrs.  Medwin  into  my  family?" 

"  Some  day,  when  you're  taking  forty  others." 
132 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

"  Ah,  but  what  I  don't  see  is  what  it  does  for  you. 
You're  already  so  welcome  among  us  that  you  can 
scarcely  improve  your  position  even  by  forming  for  us 
the  most  delightful  relation." 

"  Well,  I  know  how  dear  you  are,"  Mamie  Cutter 
replied ;  "  but  one  has,  after  all,  more  than  one  side, 
and  more  than  one  sympathy.  I  like  her,  you  know." 
And  even  at  this  Lady  Wantridge  was  not  shocked; 
she  showed  that  ease  and  blandness  which  were  her 
way,  unfortunately,  of  being  most  impossible.  She  re 
marked  that  she  might  listen  to  such  things,  because 
she  was  clever  enough  for  them  not  to  matter;  only 
Mamie  should  take  care  how  she  went  about  saying 
them  at  large.  When  she  became  definite,  however, 
in  a  minute,  on  the  subject  of  the  public  facts,  Miss 
Cutter  soon  found  herself  ready  to  make  her  own  con 
cession.  Of  course,  she  didn't  dispute  them:  there  they 
were ;  they  were  unfortunately  on  record,  and  nothing 
was  to  be  done  about  them  but  to — Mamie  found  it, 
in  truth,  at  this  point,  a  little  difficult. 

"  Well,  what  ?  Pretend  already  to  have  forgotten 
them?" 

"  Why  not,  when  you've  done  it  in  so  many  other 
cases?" 

"  There  are  no  other  cases  so  bad.  One  meets  them, 
at  any  rate,  as  they  come.  Some  you  can  manage, 
others  you  can't.  It's  no  use,  you  must  give  them  up. 
They're  past  patching ;  there's  nothing  to  be  done  with 
them.  There's  nothing,  accordingly,  to  be  done  with 
Mrs.  Medwin  but  to  put  her  off."  And  Lady  Want- 
ridge  rose  to  her  height. 

"  Well,  you  know,  I  do  do  things,"  Mamie  quavered 
with  a  smile  so  strained  that  it  partook  of  exaltation. 

'  You  help  people?  Oh  yes,  I've  known  you  to  do 
wonders.  But  stick,"  said  Lady  Wantridge  with 
strong  and  cheerful  emphasis,  "  to  your  Americans !  " 

Miss  Cutter,  gazing,  got  up.    "  You  don't  do  justice, 

133 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

Lady  Wantridge,  to  your  own  compatriots.  Some  of 
them  are  really  charming.  Besides,"  said  Mamie, 
"  working  for  mine  often  strikes  me,  so  far  as  the  in 
terest — the  inspiration  and  excitement,  don't  you 
know? — go,  as  rather  too  easy.  You  all,  as  I  con 
stantly  have  occasion  to  say,  like  us  so !  " 

Her  companion  frankly  weighed  it.  "  Yes ;  it  takes 
that  to  account  for  your  position.  I've  always  thought 
of  you,  nevertheless,  as  keeping,  for  their  benefit,  a 
regular  working  agency.  They  come  to  you,  and  you 
place  them.  There  remains,  I  confess,"  her  ladyship 
went  on  in  the  same  free  spirit,  "  the  great  won 
der " 

"  Of  how  I  first  placed  my  poor  little  self?  Yes," 
Mamie  bravely  conceded,  "  when  /  began  there  was  no 
agency.  I  just  worked  my  passage.  I  didn't  even 
come  to  you,  did  I?  You  never  noticed  me  till,  as 
Mrs.  Short  Stokes  says, '  I  was  'way,  'way  up ! '  Mrs. 
Medwin,"  she  threw  in,  "  can't  get  over  it."  Then,  as 
her  friend  looked  vague :  "  Over  my  social  situation." 

"  Well,  it's  no  great  flattery  to  you  to  say,"  Lady 
Wantridge  good-humouredly  returned,  "  that  she  cer 
tainly  can't  hope  for  one  resembling  it."  Yet  it  really 
seemed  to  spread  there  before  them.  "  You  simply 
made  Mrs.  Short  Stokes." 

"  In  spite  of  her  name !  "  Mamie  smiled. 

"  Oh,  your  names !    In  spite  of  everything." 

"  Ah,  I'm  something  of  an  artist."  With  which, 
and  a  relapse  marked  by  her  wistful  eyes  into  the  grav 
ity  of  the  matter,  she  supremely  fixed  her  friend.  She 
felt  how  little  she  minded  betraying  at  last  the  extrem 
ity  of  her  need,  and  it  was  out  of  this  extremity  that 
her  appeal  proceeded.  "  Have  I  really  had  your  last 
word  ?  It  means  so  much  to  me." 

Lady  Wantridge  came  straight  to  the  point.  "  You 
mean  you  depend  on  it?  " 

"Awfully!" 

134 


MRS.    MEDWIN 

"Is  it  all  you  have?" 

"All.    Now." 

"  But  Mrs.  Short  Stokes  and  the  others — '  rolling/ 
aren't  they  ?  Don't  they  pay  up  ?  " 

"  Ah,"  sighed  Mamie,  "  if  it  wasn't  for  them !  " 

Lady  Wantridge  perceived.  "  You've  had  so 
much?" 

"  I  couldn't  have  gone  on." 

"  Then  what  do  you  do  with  it  all  ?  " 

"  Oh,  most  of  it  goes  back  to  them.  There  are  all 
sorts,  and  it's  all  help.  Some  of  them  have  nothing." 

"  Oh,  if  you  feed  the  hungry,"  Lady  Wantridge 
laughed,  "  you're  indeed  in  a  great  way  of  business. 
Is  Mrs.  Medwin  " — her  transition  was  immediate — 
"really  rich?" 

"  Really.    He  left  her  everything." 

"  So  that  if  I  do  say  '  yes  ' " 

"  It  will  quite  set  me  up." 

"  I  see — and  how  much  more  responsible  it  makes 
one !  But  I'd  rather  myself  give  you  the  money." 

"  Oh !  "  Mamie  coldly  murmured. 

"  You  mean  I  mayn't  suspect  your  prices  ?  Well, 
I  daresay  I  don't !  But  I'd  rather  give  you  ten  pounds." 

"  Oh !  "  Mamie  repeated  in  a  tone  that  sufficiently 
covered  her  prices.  The  question  was  in  every  way 
larger.  "Do  you  never  forgive?"  she  reproachfully 
inquired.  The  door  opened,  however,  at  the  moment 
she  spoke,  and  Scott  Homer  presented  himself. 

IV 

SCOTT  HOMER  wore  exactly,  to  his  sister's  eyes,  the 
aspect  he  had  worn  the  day  before,  and  it  also  formed, 
to  her  sense,  the  great  feature  of  his  impartial  greet 
ing. 

"  How  d'ye  do,  Mamie?  How  d'ye  do,  Lady  Want 
ridge?0 

135 


THE   BETTER    SORT 

"  How  d'ye  do  again  ?  "  Lady  Wantridge  replied 
with  an  equanimity  striking  to  her  hostess.  It  was  as 
if  Scott's  own  had  been  contagious;  it  was  almost  in 
deed  as  if  she  had  seen  him  before.  Had  she  ever  so 
seen  him — before  the  previous  day?  While  Miss  Cut 
ter  put  to  herself  this  question  her  visitor,  at  all  events, 
met  the  one  she  had  previously  uttered. 

"  Ever  l  forgive  '  ?  "  this  personage  echoed  in  a  tone 
that  made  as  little  account  as  possible  of  the  interrup 
tion.  "  Dear,  yes !  The  people  I  have  forgiven !  " 
She  laughed — perhaps  a  little  nervously ;  and  she  was 
now  looking  at  Scott.  The  way  she  looked  at  him 
was  precisely  what  had  already  had  its  effect  for  his 
sister.  "  The  people  I  can !  " 

"  Can  you  forgive  me?  "  asked  Scott  Homer. 

She  took  it  so  easily.     "  But— what?  " 

Mamie  interposed ;  she  turned  directly  to  her  broth 
er.  "  Don't  try  her.  Leave  it  so."  She  had  had  an 
inspiration ;  it  was  the  most  extraordinary  thing  in  the 
world.  "  Don't  try  him  " — she  had  turned  to  their 
companion.  She  looked  grave,  sad,  strange.  "  Leave 
it  so."  Yes,  it  was  a  distinct  inspiration,  which  she 
couldn't  have  explained,  but  which  had  come,  prompted 
by  something  she  had  caught — the  extent  of  the  recog 
nition  expressed — in  Lady  Wantridge's  face.  It  had 
come  absolutely  of  a  sudden,  straight  out  of  the  oppo 
sition  of  the  two  figures  before  her — quite  as  if  a  con 
cussion  had  struck  a  light.  The  light  was  helped  by 
her  quickened  sense  that  her  friend's  silence  on  the 
incident  of  the  day  before  showed  some  sort  of  con 
sciousness.  She  looked  surprised.  "  Do  you  know  my 
brother?" 

"  Do  I  know  you?  "  Lady  Wantridge  asked  of  him. 

"  No,  Lady  Wantridge,"  Scott  pleasantly  confessed, 
"not  one  little  mite!  " 

"  Well,  then,  if  you  must  go !  "  and  Mamie  of 
fered  her  a  hand.  "  But  I'll  go  down  with  you.  Not 

136 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

you! "  she  launched  at  her  brother,  who  immediately 
effaced  himself.  His  way  of  doing  so — and  he  had  al 
ready  done  so,  as  for  Lady  Wantridge,  in  respect  to 
their  previous  encounter — struck  her  even  at  the  mo 
ment  as  an  instinctive,  if  slightly  blind,  tribute  to  her 
possession  of  an  idea ;  and  as  such,  in  its  celerity,  made 
her  so  admire  him,  and  their  common  wit,  that,  on  the 
spot,  she  more  than  forgave  him  his  queerness.  He 
was  right.  He  could  be  as  queer  as  he  liked!  The 
queerer  the  better!  It  was  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs, 
when  she  had  got  her  guest  down,  that  what  she  had 
assured  Mrs.  Medwin  would  come  did  indeed  come. 
"  Did  you  meet  him  here  yesterday?  " 

"  Dear,  yes.    Isn't  he  too  funny  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Mamie  gloomily.  "  He  is  funny.  But 
had  you  ever  met  him  before?  " 

"Dear,  no!" 

"  Oh !  " — and  Mamie's  tone  might  have  meant  many 
things. 

Lady  Wantridge,  however,  after  all,  easily  over 
looked  it.  "  I  only  knew  he  was  one  of  your  odd 
Americans.  That's  why,  when  I  heard  yesterday,  here, 
that  he  was  up  there  awaiting  your  return,  I  didn't  let 
that  prevent  me.  I  thought  he  might  be.  He  cer 
tainly,"  her  ladyship  laughed,  "  is." 

"  Yes,  he's  very  American,"  Mamie  went  on  in  the 
same  way. 

"  As  you  say,  we  are  fond  of  you !  Good-bye,"  said 
Lady  Wantridge. 

But  Mamie  had  not  half  done  with  her.  She  felt 
more  and  more — or  she  hoped  at  least — that  she  looked 
strange.  She  was,  no  doubt,  if  it  came  to  that,  strange. 
"  Lady  Wantridge,"  she  almost  convulsively  broke  out, 
"  I  don't  know  whether  youll  understand  me,  but  I 
seem  to  feel  that  I  must  act  with  you — I  don't  know 
what  to  call  it ! — responsibly.  He  is  my  brother." 

"  Surely — and  why  not?  "  Lady  Wantridge  stared. 
"  He's  the  image  of  you !  " 

137 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

"  Thank  you !  " — and  Mamie  was  stranger  than  ever. 

"  Oh,  he's  good-looking.  He's  handsome,  my  dear. 
Oddly — but  distinctly !  "  Her  ladyship  was  for  treat 
ing  it  much  as  a  joke. 

But  Mamie,  all  sombre,  would  have  none  of  this. 
She  boldly  gave  him  up.  "  I  think  he's  awful." 

"  He  is  indeed — delightfully.  And  where  do  you 
get  your  ways  of  saying  things?  It  isn't  anything — 
and  the  things  aren't  anything.  But  it's  so  droll." 

"  Don't  let  yourself,  all  the  same,"  Mamie  consist 
ently  pursued,  "  be  carried  away  by  it.  The  thing 
can't  be  done — simply." 

Lady  Wantridge  wondered.     "  '  Done  simply  '  ?" 

"  Done  at  all." 

"But  what  can't  be?" 

"  Why,  what  you  might  think — from  his  pleasant 
ness.  What  he  spoke  of  your  doing  for  him." 

Lady  Wantridge  recalled.     "  Forgiving  him?  " 

"  He  asked  you  if  you  couldn't.  But  you  can't.  It's 
too  dreadful  for  me,  as  so  near  a  relation,  to  have, 
loyally — loyally  to  you — to  say  it.  But  he's  impos 
sible." 

It  was  so  portentously  produced  that  her  ladyship 
had  somehow  to  meet  it.  "  What's  the  matter  with 
him?" 

"  I  don't  know." 

"  Then  what's  the  matter  with  you?  "  Lady  Want 
ridge  inquired. 

"  It's  because  I  won't  know,"  Mamie — not  without 
dignity — explained. 

'Then/  won't  either!" 

"  Precisely.  Don't.  It's  something,"  Mamie  pur 
sued,  with  some  inconsequence,  "  that — somewhere  or 
other,  at  some  time  or  other — he  appears  to  have  done ; 
something  that  has  made  a  difference  in  his  life." 

"  '  Something  '  ?  "  Lady  Wantridge  echoed  again. 
"What  kind  of  thing?" 

138 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

Mamie  looked  up  at  the  light  above  the  door,  through 
which  the  London  sky  was  doubly  dim.  "  I  haven't 
the  least  idea." 

"  Then  what  kind  of  difference?  " 

Mamie's  gaze  was  still  at  the  light.  "  The  difference 
you  see." 

Lady  Wantridge,  rather  obligingly,  seemed  to  ask 
herself  what  she  saw.  "  But  I  don't  see  any !  It  seems, 
at  least,"  she  added,  "  such  an  amusing  one!  And  he 
has  such  nice  eyes." 

"  Oh,  dear  eyes !  "  Mamie  conceded ;  but  with  too 
much  sadness,  for  the  moment,  about  the  connections 
of  the  subject,  to  say  more. 

It  almost  forced  her  companion,  after  an  instant,  to 
proceed.  "  Do  you  mean  he  can't  go  home?  " 

She  weighed  her  responsibility.  "  I  only  make  out 
— more's  the  pity! — that  he  doesn't." 

"Is  it  then  something  too  terrible ?" 

She  thought  again.  "  I  don't  know  what — for  men 
— is  too  terrible." 

"  Well  then,  as  you  don't  know  what '  is  '  for  women 
either — good-bye !  "  her  visitor  laughed. 

It  practically  wound  up  the  interview;  which,  how 
ever,  terminating  thus  on  a  considerable  stir  of  the  air, 
was  to  give  Miss  Cutter,  the  next  few  days,  the  sense 
of  being  much  blown  about.  The  degree  to  which,  to 
begin  with,  she  had  been  drawn — or  perhaps  rather 
pushed — closer  to  Scott  was  marked  in  the  brief  col 
loquy  that,  on  her  friend's  departure,  she  had  with 
him.  He  had  immediately  said  it.  "  You'll  see  if  she 
doesn't  ask  me  down !  " 

"So  soon?" 

"  Oh,  I've  known  them  at  places — at  Cannes,  at  Pau, 
at  Shanghai — to  do  it  sooner  still.  I  always  know 
when  they  will.  You  can't  make  out  they  don't  love 
me!"  He  spoke  almost  plaintively,  as  if  he  wished 
she  could. 

139 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Then  I  don't  see  why  it  hasn't  done  you  more 
good." 

"  Why,  Mamie,"  he  patiently  reasoned,  "  what  more 
good  could  it?  As  I  tell  you,"  he  explained,  "  it  has 
just  been  my  life." 

"  Then  why  do  you  come  to  me  for  money?  " 

"  Oh,  they  don't  give  me  that!  "  Scott  returned. 

"  So  that  it  only  means  then,  after  all,  that  I,  at  the 
best,  must  keep  you  up  ?  " 

He  fixed  on  her  the  nice  eyes  that  Lady  Wantridge 
admired.  "  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  already — at 
this  very  moment — I  am  not  distinctly  keeping  you?  " 

She  gave  him  back  his  look.  "  AVait  till  she  has 
asked  you,  and  then,"  Mamie  added,  "  decline." 

Scott,  not  too  grossly,  wondered.  "  As  acting  for 
you?  " 

Mamie's  next  injunction  was  answer  enough.  "  But 
before — yes — call." 

He  took  it  in.     "  Call — but  decline.     Good." 

"  The  rest,"  she  said,  "  I  leave  to  you."  And  she 
left  it,  in  fact,  with  such  confidence  that  for  a  couple 
of  days  she  was  not  only  conscious  of  no  need  to  give 
Mrs.  Medwin  another  turn  of  the  screw,  but  positively 
evaded,  in  her  fortitude,  the  reappearance  of  that  lady. 
It  was  not  till  the  third  day  that  she  waited  upon  her, 
finding  her,  as  she  had  expected,  tense. 

"  Lady  Wantridge  will ?  " 

"  Yes,  though  she  says  she  won't." 

"  She  says  she  won't  ?  O — oh !  "  Mrs.  Medwin 
moaned. 

"  Sit  tight  all  the  same.    I  have  her!  " 

"But  how?" 

"  Through  Scott — whom  she  wants." 

"Your  bad  brother!"  Mrs.  Medwin  stared. 
"  What  does  she  want  of  him?  " 

"  To  amuse  them  at  Catchmore.  Anything  for  that. 
And  he  would.  But  he  sha'n't!"  Mamie  declared. 

140 


MRS.   MEDWIN 

""  He  sha'n't  go  unless  she  comes.    She  must  meet  you 
first — you're  my  condition." 

"  O — o — oh !  "  Mrs.  Medwin's  tone  was  a  wonder 
of  hope  and  fear.  "  But  doesn't  he  want  to  go?  " 

"  He  wants  what  /  want.  She  draws  the  line  at- 
you.  I  draw  the  line  at  him." 

"  But  she — doesn't  she  mind  that  he's  bad  ?  " 

It  was  so  artless  that  Mamie  laughed.  "  No ;  it 
doesn't  touch  her.  Besides,  perhaps  he  isn't.  It  isn't 
as  for  you — people  seem  not  to  know.  He  has  settled 
everything,  at  all  events,  by  going  to  see  her.  It's 
before  her  that  he's  the  thing  she  will  have  to  have." 

"Have  to?" 

"  For  Sundays  in  the  country.  A  feature — the 
feature." 

"  So  she  has  asked  him?  " 

'Yes;  and  he  has  declined." 

"  For  me?  "  Mrs.  Medwin  panted. 

"  For  me,"  said  Mamie,  on  the  doorstep.  "  But  I 
don't  leave  him  for  long."  Her  hansom  had  waited. 
"  She'll  come." 

Lady  Wantridge  did  come.  She  met  in  South  Aud- 
ley  Street,  on  the  fourteenth,  at  tea,  the  ladies  whom 
Mamie  had  named  to  her,  together  with  three  or  four 
others,  and  it  was  rather  a  masterstroke  for  Miss  Cut 
ter  that,  if  Mrs.  Medwin  was  modestly  present,  Scott 
Homer  was  as  markedly  not.  This  occasion,  however, 
is  a  medal  that  would  take  rare  casting,  as  would  also, 
for  that  matter,  even  the  minor  light  and  shade,  the 
lower  relief,  of  the  pecuniary  transaction  that  Mrs. 
Medwin's  flushed  gratitude  scarce  awaited  the  dispersal 
of  the  company  munificently  to  complete.  A  new  un 
derstanding  indeed,  on  the  spot  rebounded  from  it, 
the  conception  of  which,  in  Mamie's  mind,  had  prompt 
ly  bloomed.  "  He  sha'n't  go  now  unless  he  takes  you." 
Then,  as  her  fancy  always  moved  quicker  for  her 
client  than  her  client's  own — "  Down  with  him  to 

141 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

Catchmore!  When  he  goes  to  amuse  them,  you"  she 
comfortably  declared,  "  shall  amuse  them  too."  Mrs. 
Medwin's  response  was  again  rather  oddly  divided, 
but  she  was  sufficiently  intelligible  when  it  came  to 
meeting  the  intimation  that  this  latter  would  be  an 
opportunity  involving  a  separate  fee.  "  Say,"  Mamie 
had  suggested,  "  the  same." 

"  Very  well;  the  same." 

The  knowledge  that  it  was  to  be  the  same  had  per 
haps  something  to  do,  also,  with  the  obliging  spirit  in 
which  Scott  eventually  went.  It  was  all,  at  the  last, 
rather  hurried — a  party  rapidly  got  together  for  the 
Grand  Duke,  who  was  in  England  but  for  the  hour, 
who  had  good-naturedly  proposed  himself,  and  who 
liked  his  parties  small,  intimate  and  funny.  This  one 
was  of  the  smallest,  and  it  was  finally  judged  to  con 
form  neither  too  little  nor  too  much  to  the  other  con 
ditions — after  a  brief  whirlwind  of  wires  and  counter- 
wires,  and  an  iterated  waiting  of  hansons  at  various 
doors — to  include  Mrs.  Medwin.  It  was  from  Catch- 
more  itself  that,  snatching  a  moment  on  the  wondrous 
Sunday  afternoon,  this  lady  had  the  harmonious 
thought  of  sending  the  new  cheque.  She  was  in  bliss 
enough,  but  her  scribble  none  the  less  intimated  that  it 
was  Scott  who  amused  them  most.  He  was  the 
feature. 


FLICKERBRIDGE 


FRANK  GRANGER  had  arrived  from  Paris  to 
paint  a  portrait — an  order  given  him,  as  a  young 
compatriot  with  a  future,  whose  early  work  would 
some  day  have  a  price,  by  a  lady  from  New  York,  a 
friend  of  his  own  people  and  also,  as  it  happened,  of 
Addie's,  the  young  woman  to  whom  it  was  publicly 
both  affirmed  and  denied  that  he  was  engaged.  Other 
young  women  in  Paris — fellow-members  there  of  the 
little  tight  transpontine  world  of  art-study — professed 
to  know  that  the  pair  had  been  "  several  limes  "  over 
so  closely  contracted.  This,  however,  was  their  own 
affair;  the  last  phase  of  the  relation,  the  last  time  of 
the  times,  had  passed  into  vagueness;  there  was  per 
haps  even  an  impression  that  if  they  were  inscrutable  to 
their  friends  they  were  not  wholly  crystalline  to  each 
other  and  themselves.  What  had  occurred  for  Granger, 
at  all  events,  in  connection  with  the  portrait  was  that 
Mrs.  Bracken,  his  intending  model,  whose  return  to 
America  was  at  hand,  had  suddenly  been  called  to  Lon 
don  by  her  husband,  occupied  there  with  pressing  busi 
ness,  but  had  yet  desired  that  her  displacement  should 
not  interrupt  her  sittings.  The  young  man,  at  her  re 
quest,  had  followed  her  to  England  and  profited  by 
all  she  could  give  him,  making  shift  with  a  small  studio 
lent  him  by  a  London  painter  whom  he  had  known 
and  liked,  a  few  years  before,  in  the  French  atelier 
that  then  cradled,  and  that  continued  to  cradle,  so 
many  of  their  kind. 

143 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

The  British  capital  was  a  strange,  grey  world  to 
him,  where  people  walked,  in  more  ways  than  one,  by 
a  dim  light;  but  he  was  happily  of  such  a  turn  that 
the  impression,  just  as  it  came,  could  nowhere  ever  fail 
him,  and  even  the  worst  of  these  things  was  almost 
as  much  an  occupation — putting  it  only  at  that — as 
the  best.  Mrs.  Bracken,  moreover,  passed  him  on, 
and  while  the  darkness  ebbed  a  little  in  the  April  days 
he  found  himself  consolingly  committed  to  a  couple 
of  fresh  subjects.  This  cut  him  out  work  for  more  than 
another  month,  but  meanwhile,  as  he  said,  he  saw  a  lot 
— a  lot  that,  with  frequency  and  with  much  expression, 
he  wrote  about  to  Addie.  She  also  wrote  to  her  absent 
friend,  but  in  briefer  snatches,  a  meagreness  to  her 
reasons  for  which  he  had  long  since  assented.  She 
had  other  play  for  her  pen,  as  well  as,  fortunately, 
other  remuneration;  a  regular  correspondence  for  a 
"  prominent  Boston  paper,"  fitful  connections  with 
public  sheets  perhaps  also,  in  cases,  fitful,  and  a  mind, 
above  all,  engrossed  at  times,  to  the  exclusion  of  every 
thing  else,  with  the  study  of  the  short  story.  This 
last  was  what  she  had  mainly  come  out  to  go  into,  two 
or  three  years  after  he  had  found  himself  engulfed  in 
the  mystery  of  Carolus.  She  was  indeed,  on  her  own 
deep  sea,  more  engulfed  than  he  had  ever  been,  and  he 
had  grown  to  accept  the  sense  that,  for  progress  too, 
she  sailed  under  more  canvas.  It  had  not  been  par 
ticularly  present  to  him  till  now  that  he  had  in  the  least 
got  on,  but  the  way  in  which  Addie  had — and  evident 
ly,  still  more,  would — was  the  theme,  as  it  were,  of 
every  tongue.  She  had  thirty  short  stories  out  and 
nine  descriptive  articles.  His  three  or  four  portraits 
of  fat  American  ladies — they  were  all  fat,  all  ladies 
and  all  American — were  a  poor  show  compared  with 
these  triumphs;  especially  as  Addie  had  begun  to 
throw  out  that  it  was  about  time  they  should  go  home. 
It  kept  perpetually  coming  up  in  Paris,  in  the  trans- 

144 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

pontine  world,  that,  as  the  phrase  was,  America  had 
grown  more  interesting  since  they  left.  Addie  was  at 
tentive  to  the  rumour,  and,  as  full  of  conscience  as  she 
was  of  taste,  of  patriotism  as  of  curiosity,  had  often 
put  it  to  him  frankly,  with  what  he,  who  was  of  New 
York,  recognised  as  her  New  England  emphasis :  "  I'm 
not  sure,  you  know,  that  we  do  real  justice  to  our 
country."  Granger  felt  he  would  do  it  on  the  day — 
if  the  day  ever  came — he  should  irrevocably  marry  her. 
No  other  country  could  possibly  have  produced  her. 

II 

BUT  meanwhile  it  befell,  in  London,  that  he  was  strick 
en  with  influenza  and  with  subsequent  sorrow.  The 
attack  was  short  but  sharp — had  it  lasted  Addie  would 
certainly  have  come  to  his  aid ;  most  of  a  blight,  really, 
in  its  secondary  stage.  The  good  ladies  his  sitters — 
the  ladies  with  the  frizzled  hair,  with  the  diamond  ear 
rings,  with  the  chins  tending  to  the  massive — left  for 
him,  at  the  door  of  his  lodgings,  flowers,  soup  and  love, 
so  that  with  their  assistance  he  pulled  through;  but 
his  convalescence  was  slow  and  his  weakness  out  of 
proportion  to  the  muffled  shock.  He  came  out,  but 
he  went  about  lame;  it  tired  him  to  paint — he  felt  as 
if  he  had  been  ill  for  a  month.  He  strolled  in  Kensing 
ton  Gardens  when  he  should  have  been  at  work ;  he  sat 
long  on  penny  chairs  and  helplessly  mused  and  mooned. 
Addie  desired  him  to  return  to  Paris,  but  there  were 
chances  under  his  hand  that  he  felt  he  had  just  wit 
enough  left  not  to  relinquish.  He  would  have  gone  for 
a  week  to  the  sea — he  would  have  gone  to  Brighton; 
but  Mrs.  Bracken  had  to  be  finished — Mrs.  Bracken 
was  so  soon  to  sail.  He  just  managed  to  finish  her 
in  time — the  day  before  the  date  fixed  for  his  breaking 
ground  on  a  greater  business  still,  the  circumvallation 
of  Mrs.  Dunn.  Mrs.  Dunn  duly  waited  on  him,  and 

145 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

he  sat  down  before  her,  feeling,  however,  ere  he  rose, 
that  he  must  take  a  long  breath  before  the  attack. 
While  asking  himself  that  night,  therefore,  where  he 
should  best  replenish  his  lungs,  he  received  from  Addie, 
who  had  had  from  Mrs.  Bracken  a  poor  report  of  him, 
a  communication  which,  besides  being  of  sudden  and 
startling  interest,  applied  directly  to  his  case. 

His  friend  wrote  to  him  under  the  lively  emotion 
of  having  from  one  day  to  another  become  aware  of 
a  new  relative,  an  ancient  cousin,  a  sequestered  gentle 
woman,  the  sole  survival  of  "  the  English  branch  of 
the  family,"  still  resident,  at  Flickerbridge,  in  the 
"  old  family  home,"  and  with  whom,  that  he  might 
immediately  betake  himself  to  so  auspicious  a  quarter 
for  change  of  air,  she  had  already  done  what  was 
proper  to  place  him,  as  she  said,  in  touch.  What  came 
of  it  all,  to  be  brief,  was  that  Granger  found  himself 
so  placed  almost  as  he  read :  he  was  in  touch  with  Miss 
Wenham  of  Flickerbridge,  to  the  extent  of  being  in 
correspondence  with  her,  before  twenty-four  hours  had 
sped.  And  on  the  second  day  he  was  in  the  train,  set 
tled  for  a  five-hours'  run  to  the  door  of  this  amiable 
woman,  who  had  so  abruptly  and  kindly  taken  him  on 
trust  and  of  whom  but  yesterday  he  had  never  so  much 
as  heard.  This  was  an  oddity — the  whole  incident  was 
— of  which,  in  the  corner  of  his  compartment,  as  he 
proceeded,  he  had  time  to  take  the  size.  But  the  sur 
prise,  the  incongruity,  as  he  felt,  could  but  deepen  as  he 
went.  It  was  a  sufficiently  queer  note,  in  the  light, 
or  the  absence  of  it,  of  his  late  experience,  that  so  com 
plex  a  product  as  Addie  should  have  any  simple  insular 
tie ;  but  it  was  a  queerer  note  still  that  she  should  have 
had  one  so  long  only  to  remain  unprofitably  uncon 
scious  of  it.  Not  to  have  done  something  with  it,  used 
it,  worked  it,  talked  about  it  at  least,  and  perhaps  even 
written — these  things,  at  the  rate  she  moved,  repre 
sented  a  loss  of  opportunity  under  which,  as  he  saw 

146 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

her,  she  was  peculiarly  formed  to  wince.  She  was  at 
any  rate,  it  was  clear,  doing  something  with  it  now; 
using  it,  working  it,  certainly,  already  talking — and, 
yes,  quite  possibly  writing — about  it.  She  was,  in 
short,  smartly  making  up  what  she  had  missed,  and 
he  could  take  such  comfort  from  his  own  action  as 
he  had  been  helped  to  by  the  rest  of  the  facts,  succinctly 
reported  from  Paris  on  the  very  morning  of  his  start. 
It  was  the  singular  story  of  a  sharp  split — in  a  good 
English  house — that  dated  now  from  years  back.  A 
worthy  Briton,  of  the  best  middling  stock,  had,  early 
in  the  forties,  as  a  very  young  man,  in  Dresden,  whither 
he  had  been  despatched  to  qualify  in  German  for  a 
stool  in  an  uncle's  counting-house,  met,  admired,  wooed 
and  won  an  American  girl,  of  due  attractions,  domi 
ciled  at  that  period  with  her  parents  and  a  sister,  who 
was  also  attractive,  in  the  Saxon  capital.  He  had  mar 
ried  her,  taken  her  to  England,  and  there,  after  some 
years  of  harmony  and  happiness,  lost  her.  The  sister 
in  question  had,  after  her  death,  come  to  him,  and  to 
his  young  child,  on  a  visit,  the  effect  of  which,  between 
the  pair,  eventually  defined  itself  as  a  sentiment  that 
was  not  to  be  resisted.  The  bereaved  husband,  yield 
ing  to  a  new  attachment  and  a  new  response,  and  find 
ing  a  new  union  thus  prescribed,  had  yet  been  forced 
to  reckon  with  the  unaccommodating  law  of  the  land. 
Encompassed  with  frowns  in  his  own  country,  how 
ever,  marriages  of  this  particular  type  were  wreathed 
in  smiles  in  his  sister's-in-law,  so  that  his  remedy  was 
not  forbidden.  Choosing  between  two  allegiances  he 
had  let  the  one  go  that  seemed  the  least  close,  and 
had,  in  brief,  transplanted  his  possibilities  to  an  easier 
air.  The  knot  was  tied  for  the  couple  in  New  York, 
where,  to  protect  the  legitimacy  of  such  other  children 
as  might  come  to  them,  they  settled  and  prospered. 
Children  came,  and  one  of  the  daughters,  growing  up 
and  marrying  in  her  turn,  was,  if  Frank  rightly  fol- 

147 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

lowed,  the  mother  of  his  own  Addie,  who  had  been 
deprived  of  the  knowledge  of  her  indeed,  in  childhood, 
by  death,  and  been  brought  up,  though  without  undue 
tension,  by  a  stepmother — a  character  thus,  in  the  con 
nection,  repeated. 

The  breach  produced  in  England  by  the  invidious 
action,  as  it  was  there  held,  of  the  girl's  grandfather, 
had  not  failed  to  widen — all  the  more  that  nothing  had 
been  done  on  the  American  side  to  close  it.  Frigidity 
had  settled,  and  hostility  had  only  been  arrested  by  in 
difference.  Darkness,  therefore,  had  fortunately  su 
pervened,  and  a  cousinship  completely  divided.  On 
either  side  of  the  impassable  gulf,  of  the  impenetrable 
curtain,  each  branch  had  put  forth  its  leaves — a  foliage 
wanting,  in  the  American  quarter,  it  was  distinct 
enough  to  Granger,  in  no  sign  or  symptom  of  climate 
and  environment.  The  graft  in  New  York  had  taken, 
and  Addie  was  a  vivid,  an  unmistakable  flower.  At 
Flickerbridge,  or  wherever,  on  the  other  hand,  strange 
to  say,  the  parent  stem  had  had  a  fortune  comparatively 
meagre.  Fortune,  it  was  true,  in  the  vulgarest  sense, 
had  attended  neither  party.  Addie's  immediate  belong 
ings  were  as  poor  as  they  were  numerous,  and  he  gath 
ered  that  Miss  Wenham's  pretensions  to  wealth  were 
not  so  marked  as  to  expose  the  claim  of  kinship  to  the 
imputation  of  motive.  To  this  lady's  single  identity, 
at  all  events,  the  original  stock  had  dwindled,  and  our 
young  man  was  properly  warned  that  he  should  find 
her  shy  and  solitary.  What  was  singular  was  that,  in 
these  conditions,  she  should  desire,  she  should  endure, 
to  receive  him.  But  that  was  all  another  story,  lucid 
enough  when  mastered.  He  kept  Addie's  letters,  ex 
ceptionally  copious,  in  his  lap;  he  conned  them  at  in 
tervals;  he  held  the  threads. 

He  looked  out  between  whiles  at  the  pleasant  Eng 
lish  land,  an  April  aquarelle  washed  in  with  wondrous 
breadth.  He  knew  the  French  thing,  he  knew  the 

148 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

American,  but  he  had  known  nothing  of  this.  He  saw 
it  already  as  the  remarkable  Miss  Wenham's  setting. 
The  doctor's  daughter  at  Flickerbridge,  with  nippers 
on  her  nose,  a  palette  on  her  thumb  and  innocence  in 
her  heart,  had  been  the  miraculous  link.  She  had  be 
come  aware,  even  there,  in  our  world  of  wonders,  that 
the  current  fashion  for  young  women  so  equipped  was 
to  enter  the  Parisian  lists.  Addie  had  accordingly 
chanced  upon  her,  on  the  slopes  of  Montparnasse,  as 
one  of  the  English  girls  in  one  of  the  thorough-going 
sets.  They  had  met  in  some  easy  collocation  and  had 
fallen  upon  common  ground;  after  which  the  young 
woman,  restored  to  Flickerbridge  for  an  interlude  and 
retailing  there  her  adventures  and  impressions,  had 
mentioned  to  Miss  Wenham,  who  had  known  and  pro 
tected  her  from  babyhood,  that  that  lady's  own  name 
of  Adelaide  was,  as  well  as  the  surname  conjoined 
with  it,  borne,  to  her  knowledge,  in  Paris,  by  an  ex 
traordinary  American  specimen.  She  had  then  re- 
crossed  the  Channel  with  a  wonderful  message,  a 
courteous  challenge,  to  her  friend's  duplicate,  who  had 
in  turn  granted  through  her  every  satisfaction.  The 
duplicate  had,  in  other  words,  bravely  let  Miss  Wen- 
ham  know  exactly  who  she  was.  Miss  Wenham,  in 
whose  personal  tradition  the  flame  of  resentment  ap 
peared  to  have  been  reduced  by  time  to  the  palest  ashes 
— for  whom,  indeed,  the  story  of  the  great  schism  was 
now  but  a  legend  only  needing  a  little  less  dimness  to 
make  it  romantic — Miss  Wenham  had  promptly  re 
sponded  by  a  letter  fragrant  with  the  hope  that  old 
threads  might  be  taken  up.  It  was  a  relationship  that 
they  must  puzzle  out  together,  and  she  had  earnestly 
sounded  the  other  party  to  it  on  the  subject  of  a  possi 
ble  visit.  Addie  had  met  her  with  a  definite  promise; 
she  would  come  soon,  she  would  come  when  free,  she 
would  come  in  July;  but  meanwhile  she  sent  her  dep 
uty.  Frank  asked  himself  by  what  name  she  had 

149 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

described,  by  what  character  introduced  him  to  Flicker- 
bridge.  He  felt  mainly,  on  the  whole,  as  if  he  were 
going  there  to  find  out  if  he  were  engaged  to  her.  He 
was  at  sea,  really,  now,  as  to  which  of  the  various 
views  Addie  herself  took  of  it.  To  Miss  Wenham  she 
must  definitely  have  taken  one,  and  perhaps  Miss  Wen- 
ham  would  reveal  it.  This  expectation  was  really  his 
excuse  for  a  possible  indiscretion. 

Ill 

HE  was  indeed  to  learn  on  arrival  to  what  he  had  been 
committed;  but  that  was  for  a  while  so  much  a  part 
of  his  first  general  impression  that  the  fact  took  time 
to  detach  itself,  the  first  general  impression  demanding 
verily  all  his  faculties  of  response.  He  almost  felt,  for 
a  day  or  two,  the  victim  of  a  practical  joke,  a  gross 
abuse  of  confidence.  He  had  presented  himself  with 
the  moderate  amount  of  flutter  involved  in  a  sense  of 
due  preparation;  but  he  had  then  found  that,  how 
ever  primed  with  prefaces  and  prompted  with  hints, 
he  had  not  been  prepared  at  all.  How  could  he  be,  he 
asked  himself,  for  anything  so  foreign  to  his  experience, 
so  alien  to  his  proper  world,  so  little  to  be  preconceived 
in  the  sharp  north  light  of  the  newest  impressionism, 
and  yet  so  recognised,  after  all,  really,  in  the  event,  so 
noted  and  tasted  and  assimilated?  It  was  a  case  he 
would  scarce  have  known  how  to  describe — could 
doubtless  have  described  best  with  a  full,  clean  brush, 
supplemented  by  a  play  of  gesture;  for  it  was  always 
his  habit  to  see  an  occasion,  of  whatever  kind,  primarily 
as  a  picture,  so  that  he  might  get  it,  as  he  was  wont 
to  say,  so  that  he  might  keep  it,  well  together.  He 
had  been  treated  of  a  sudden,  in  this  adventure,  to  one 
of  the  sweetest,  fairest,  coolest  impressions  of  his  life 
— one,  moreover,  visibly,  from  the  start,  complete  and 
homogeneous.  Oh,  it  was  there,  if  that  was  all  one 

150 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

wanted  of  a  thing!  It  was  so  "  there  "  that,  as  had 
befallen  him  in  Italy,  in  Spain,  confronted  at  last,  in 
dusky  side-chapel  or  rich  museum,  with  great  things 
dreamed  of  or  with  greater  ones  unexpectedly  present 
ed,  he  had  held  his  breath  for  fear  of  breaking  the  spell ; 
had  almost,  from  the  quick  impulse  to  respect,  to  pro 
long,  lowered  his  voice  and  moved  on  tiptoe.  Supreme 
beauty  suddenly  revealed  is  apt  to  strike  us  as  a  pos 
sible  illusion,  playing  with  our  desire — instant  freedom 
with  it  to  strike  us  as  a  possible  rashness. 

This  fortunately,  however — and  the  more  so  as  his 
freedom  for  the  time  quite  left  him — didn't  prevent  his 
hostess,  the  evening  of  his  advent  and  while  the  vision 
was  new,  from  being  exactly  as  queer  and  rare  and 
impayable,  as  improbable,  as  impossible,  as  delightful 
at  dinner  at  eight  ( she  appeared  to  keep  these  immense 
hours)  as  she  had  overwhelmingly  been  at  tea  at  five. 
She  was  in  the  most  natural  way  in  the  world  one  of 
the  oddest  apparitions,  but  that  the  particular  means 
to  such  an  end  could  be  natural  was  an  inference  diffi 
cult  to  make.  He  failed  in  fact  to  make  it  for  a  couple 
of  days ;  but  then — though  then  only — he  made  it  with 
confidence.  By  this  time  indeed  he  was  sure  of  every 
thing,  including,  luckily,  himself.  If  we  compare  his 
impression,  with  slight  extravagance,  to  some  of  the 
greatest  he  had  ever  received,  this  is  simply  because 
the  image  before  him  was  so  rounded  and  stamped. 
It  expressed  with  pure  perfection,  it  exhausted  its 
character.  It  was  so  absolutely  and  so  unconsciously 
what  it  was.  He  had  been  floated  by  the  strangest  of 
chances  out  of  the  rushing  stream  into  a  clear,  still 
backwater — a  deep  and  quiet  pool  in  which  objects 
were  sharply  mirrored.  He  had  hitherto  in  life  known 
nothing  that  was  old  except  a  few  statues  and  pictures ; 
but  here  everything  was  old,  was  immemorial,  and 
nothing  so  much  so  as  the  very  freshness  itself.  Vague 
ly  to  have  supposed  there  were  such  nooks  in  the  world 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

had  done  little  enough,  he  now  saw,  to  temper  the  glare 
of  their  opposites.  It  was  the  fine  touches  that  counted, 
and  these  had  to  be  seen  to  be  believed. 

Miss  Wenham,  fifty-five  years  of  age,  and  unap- 
peasably  timid,  unaccountably  strange,  had,  on  her  re 
duced  scale,  an  almost  Gothic  grotesqueness ;  but  the 
final  effect  of  one's  sense  of  it  was  an  amenity  that  ac 
companied  one's  steps  like  wafted  gratitude.  More 
flurried,  more  spasmodic,  more  apologetic,  more  com 
pletely  at  a  loss  at  one  moment  and  more  precipitately 
abounding  at  another,  he  had  never  before  in  all  his 
days  seen  any  maiden  lady ;  yet  for  no  maiden  lady  he 
had  ever  seen  had  he  so  promptly  conceived  a  private 
enthusiasm.  Her  eyes  protruded,  her  chin  receded  and 
her  nose  carried  on  in  conversation  a  queer  little  in 
dependent  motion.  She  wore  on  the  top  of  her  head 
an  upright  circular  cap  that  made  her  resemble  a 
caryatid  disburdened,  and  on  other  parts  of  her  person 
strange  combinations  of  colours,  stuffs,  shapes,  of 
metal,  mineral  and  plant.  The  tones  of  her  voice  rose 
and  fell,  her  facial  convulsions,  whether  tending — one 
could  scarce  make  out — to  expression  or  repression, 
succeeded  each  other  by  a  law  of  their  own ;  she  was 
embarrassed  at  nothing  and  at  everything,  frightened 
at  everything  and  at  nothing,  and  she  approached  ob 
jects,  subjects,  the  simplest  questions  and  answers  and 
the  whole  material  of  intercourse,  either  with  the  in 
directness  of  terror  or  with  the  violence  of  despair. 
These  things,  none  the  less,  her  refinements  of  oddity 
and  intensities  of  custom,  her  suggestion  at  once  of 
conventions  and  simplicities,  of  ease  and  of  agony,  her 
roundabout,  retarded  suggestions  and  perceptions,  still 
permitted  her  to  strike  her  guest  as  irresistibly  charm 
ing.  He  didn't  know  what  to  call  it;  she  was  a  fruit 
of  time.  She  had  a  queer  distinction.  She  had  been 
expensively  produced,  and  there  would  be  a  good  deal 
more  of  her  to  come. 

152 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

The  result  of  the  whole  quality  of  her  welcome,  at 
any  rate,  was  that  the  first  evening,  in  his  room,  before 
going  to  bed,  he  relieved  his  mind  in  a  letter  to  Addie, 
which,  if  space  allowed  us  to  embody  it  in  our  text, 
would  usefully  perform  the  office  of  a  "  plate."  It 
would  enable  us  to  present  ourselves  as  profusely  illus 
trated.  But  the  process  of  reproduction,  as  we  say, 
costs.  He  wished  his  friend  to  know  how  grandly 
their  affair  turned  out.  She  had  put  him  in  the  way 
of  something  absolutely  special — an  old  house  un 
touched,  untouchable,  indescribable,  an  old  corner  such 
as  one  didn't  believe  existed,  and  the  holy  calm  of 
which  made  the  chatter  of  studios,  the  smell  of  paint, 
the  slang  of  critics,  the  whole  sense  and  sound  of  Paris, 
come  back  as  so  many  signs  of  a  huge  monkey-cage. 
He  moved  about,  restless,  while  he  wrote;  he  lighted 
cigarettes  and,  nervous  and  suddenly  scrupulous,  put 
them  out  again;  the  night  was  mild  and  one  of  the 
windows  of  his  large  high  room,  which  stood  over  the 
garden,  was  up.  He  lost  himself  in  the  things  about 
him,  in  the  type  of  the  room,  the  last  century  with  not 
a  chair  moved,  not  a  point  stretched.  He  hung  over 
the  objects  and  ornaments,  blissfully  few  and  adorably 
good,  perfect  pieces  all,  and  never  one,  for  a  change, 
French.  The  scene  was  as  rare  as  some  fine  old  print 
with  the  best  bits  down  in  the  corners.  Old  books  and 
old  pictures,  allusions  remembered  and  aspects  con 
jectured,  reappeared  to  him ;  he  knew  now  what  anx 
ious  islanders  had  been  trying  for  in  their  backward 
hunt  for  the  homely.  But  the  homely  at  Flickerbridge 
was  all  style,  even  as  style  at  the  same  time  was  mere 
honesty.  The  larger,  the  smaller  past — he  scarce  knew 
which  to  call  it — was  at  all  events  so  hushed  to  sleep 
round  him  as  he  wrote  that  he  had  almost  a  bad  con 
science  about  having  come.  How  one  might  love  it, 
but  how  one  might  spoil  it!  To  look  at  it  too  hard 
was  positively  to  make  it  conscious,  and  to  make  it 

153 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

conscious  was  positively  to  wake  it  up.  Its  only  safety, 
of  a  truth,  was  to  be  left  still  to  sleep— to  sleep  in  its 
large,  fair  chambers,  and  under  its  high,  clean  can 
opies. 

He  added  thus  restlessly  a  line  to  his  letter,  maun 
dered  round  the  room  again,  noted  and  fingered  some 
thing  else,  and  then,  dropping  on  the  old  flowered  sofa, 
sustained  by  the  tight  cubes  of  its  cushions,  yielded 
afresh  to  the  cigarette,  hesitated,  stared,  wrote  a  few 
words  more.  He  wanted  Addie  to  know,  that  was 
what  he  most  felt,  unless  he  perhaps  felt  more  how 
much  she  herself  would  want  to.  Yes,  what  he  su 
premely  saw  was  all  that  Addie  would  make  of  it.  Up 
to  his  neck  in  it  there  he  fairly  turned  cold  at  the  sense 
of  suppressed  opportunity,  of  the  outrage  of  privation, 
that  his  correspondent  would  retrospectively  and,  as 
he  even  divined  with  a  vague  shudder,  almost  vin 
dictively  nurse.  Well,  what  had  happened  was  that 
the  acquaintance  had  been  kept  for  her,  like  a  packet 
enveloped  and  sealed  for  delivery,  till  her  attention  was 
free.  He  saw  her  there,  heard  her  and  felt  her — felt 
how  she  would  feel  and  how  she  would,  as  she  usually 
said,  "  rave."  Some  of  her  young  compatriots  called 
it  "  yell,"  and  in  the  reference  itself,  alas !  illustrated 
their  meaning.  She  would  understand  the  place,  at 
any  rate,  down  to  the  ground ;  there  wasn't  the  slight 
est  doubt  of  that.  Her  sense  of  it  would  be  exactly 
like  his  own,  and  he  could  see,  in  anticipation,  just 
the  terms  of  recognition  and  rapture  in  which  she 
would  abound.  He  knew  just  what  she  would  call 
quaint,  just  what  she  would  call  bland,  just  what  she 
would  call  weird,  just  what  she  would  call  wild.  She 
would  take  it  all  in  with  an  intelligence  much  more 
fitted  than  his  own,  in  fact,  to  deal  with  what  he  sup 
posed  he  must  regard  as  its  literary  relations.  She 
would  have  read  the  obsolete,  long-winded  memoirs 
and  novels  that  both  the  figures  and  the  setting  ought 

154 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

clearly  to  remind  one  of;  she  would  know  about  the 
past  generations — the  lumbering  county  magnates  and 
their  turbaned  wives  and  round-eyed  daughters,  who, 
in  other  days,  had  treated  the  ruddy,  sturdy,  tradeless 
town,  the  solid  square  houses  and  wide,  walled  gardens, 
the  streets  to-day  all  grass  and  gossip,  as  the  scene  of 
a  local  "  season."  She  would  have  warrant  for  the 
assemblies,  dinners,  deep  potations;  for  the  smoked 
sconces  in  the  dusky  parlours;  for  the  long,  muddy 
century  of  family  coaches,  "  holsters,"  highwaymen. 
She  would  put  a  finger,  in  short,  just  as  he  had  done, 
on  the  vital  spot — the  rich  humility  of  the  whole  thing, 
the  fact  that  neither  Flickerbridge  in  general  nor  Miss 
Wenham  in  particular,  nor  anything  nor  anyone  con 
cerned,  had  a  suspicion  of  their  character  and  their 
merit.  Addie  and  he  would  have  to  come  to  let  in 
light. 

He  let  it  in  then,  little  by  little,  before  going  to  bed, 
through  the  eight  or  ten  pages  he  addressed  to  her; 
assured  her  that  it  was  the  happiest  case  in  the  world, 
a  little  picture — yet  full  of  "  style  "  too — absolutely 
composed  and  transmitted,  with  tradition,  and  tradition 
only,  in  every  stroke,  tradition  still  noiselessly  breath 
ing  and  visibly  flushing,  marking  strange  hours  in  the 
tall  mahogany  clocks  that  were  never  wound  up  and 
that  yet  audibly  ticked  on.  All  the  elements,  he  was  sure 
he  should  see,  would  hang  together  with  a  charm,  pre 
senting  his  hostess — a  strange  iridescent  fish  for  the 
glazed  exposure  of  an  aquarium — as  floating  in  her 
native  medium.  He  left  his  letter  open  on  the  table,  but, 
looking  it  over  next  morning,  felt  of  a  sudden  indis 
posed  to  send  it.  He  would  keep  it  to  add  more,  for 
there  would  be  more  to  know;  yet  when  three  days 
had  elapsed  he  had  still  not  sent  it.  He  sent  instead, 
after  delay,  a  much  briefer  report,  which  he  was  moved 
to  make  different  and,  for  some  reason,  less  vivid. 
Meanwhile  he  learned  from  Miss  Wenham  how  Addie 

155 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

had  introduced  him.  It  took  time  to  arrive  with  her 
at  that  point,  but  after  the  Rubicon  was  crossed  they 
went  far  afield. 

IV 

"  OH  yes,  she  said  you  were  engaged.  That  was  why 
— since  I  had  broken  out  so — she  thought  I  would  like 
to  see  you ;  as  I  assure  you  I've  been  so  delighted  to. 
But  aren't  you  ?  "  the  good  lady  asked  as  if  she  saw 
in  his  face  some  ground  for  doubt. 

"  Assuredly — if  she  says  so.  It  may  seem  very  odd 
to  you,  but  I  haven't  known,  and  yet  I've  felt  that, 
being  nothing  whatever  to  you  directly,  I  need  some 
warrant  for  consenting  thus  to  be  thrust  on  you.  We 
were,"  the  young  man  explained,  "  engaged  a  year 
ago;  but  since  then  (if  you  don't  mind  my  telling  you 
such  things ;  I  feel  now  as  if  I  could  tell  you  anything !) 
I  haven't  quite  known  how  I  stand.  It  hasn't  seemed 
that  we  were  in  a  position  to  marry.  Things  are 
better  now,  but  I  haven't  quite  known  how  she 
would  see  them.  They  were  so  bad  six  months  ago 
that  I  understood  her,  I  thought,  as  breaking  off.  I 
haven't  broken;  I've  only  accepted,  for  the  time — be 
cause  men  must  be  easy  with  women — being  treated 
as  '  the  best  of  friends.'  Well,  I  try  to  be.  I  wouldn't 
have  come  here  if  I  hadn't  been.  I  thought  it  would 
be  charming  for  her  to  know  you — when  I  heard  from 
her  the  extraordinary  way  you  had  dawned  upon  her, 
and  charming  therefore  if  I  could  help  her  to  it.  And 
if  I'm  helping  you  to  know  her"  he  went  on,  "  isn't 
that  charming  too  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  so  want  to !  "  Miss  Wenham  murmured,  in 
her  unpractical,  impersonal  way.  "  You're  so  differ 
ent  !"  she  wistfully  declared. 

"  It's  you,  if  I  may  respectfully,  ecstatically  say  so, 
who  are  different.  That's  the  point  of  it  all.  I'm 

156 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

not  sure  that  anything  so  terrible  really  ought  to  hap 
pen  to  you  as  to  know  us." 

"  Well,"  said  Miss  Wenhani,  "  I  do  know  you  a 
little,  by  this  time,  don't  I  ?  And  I  don't  find  it  terri 
ble.  It's  a  delightful  change  for  me." 

"Oh,  I'm  not  sure  you  ought  to  have  a  delightful 
change!" 

"Why  not— if  you  do?" 

"  Ah,  I  can  bear  it.  I'm  not  sure  that  you  can.  I'm 
too  bad  to  spoil — I  am  spoiled.  I'm  nobody,  in  short; 
I'm  nothing.  I've  no  type.  You're  all  type.  It  has 
taken  long,  delicious  years  of  security  and  monotony 
to  produce  you.  You  fit  your  frame  with  a  perfection 
only  equalled  by  the  perfection  with  which  your  frame 
fits  you.  So  this  admirable  old  house,  all  time-softened 
white  within  and  time-faded  red  without,  so  every 
thing  that  surrounds  you  here  and  that  has,  by  some 
extraordinary  mercy,  escaped  the  inevitable  fate  of  ex 
ploitation  :  so  it  all,  I  say,  is  the  sort  of  thing  that,  if 
it  were  the  least  bit  to  fall  to  pieces,  could  never,  ah, 
never  more,  be  put  together  again.  I  have,  dear  Miss 
Wenham,"  Granger  went  on,  happy  himself  in  his  ex 
travagance,  which  was  yet  all  sincere,  and  happier  still 
in  her  deep,  but  altogether  pleased,  mystification — 
"  I've  found,  do  you  know,  just  the  thing  one  has  ever 
heard  of  that  you  most  resemble.  You're  the  Sleeping 
Beauty  in  the  wood." 

He  still  had  no  compunction  when  he  heard  her  be- 
wilderedly  sigh :  "  Oh,  you're  too  delightfully  droll !  " 

"  No,  I  only  put  things  just  as  they  are,  and  as  I've 
also  learned  a  little,  thank  heaven,  to  see  them — which 
isn't,  I  quite  agree  with  you,  at  all  what  anyone  does. 
You're  in  the  deep  doze  of  the  spell  that  has  held  you 
for  long  years,  and  it  would  be  a  shame,  a  crime,  to 
wake  you  up.  Indeed  I  already  feel,  with  a  thousand 
scruples,  that  I'm  giving  you  the  fatal  shake.  I  say 
it  even  though  it  makes  me  sound  a  little  as  if  I  thought 
myself  the  fairy  prince." 

157 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

She  gazed  at  him  with  her  queerest,  kindest  look, 
which  he  was  getting  used  to,  in  spite  of  a  faint  fear, 
at  the  back  of  his  head,  of  the  strange  things  that  some 
times  occurred  when  lonely  ladies,  however  mature, 
began  to  look  at  interesting  young  men  from  over  the 
seas  as  if  the  young  men  desired  to  flirt.  "  It's  so  won 
derful,"  she  said,  "  that  you  should  be  so  very  odd  and 
yet  so  very  good-natured."  Well,  it  all  came  to  the 
same  thing — it  was  so  wonderful  that  she  should  be 
so  simple  and  yet  so  little  of  a  bore.  He  accepted  with 
gratitude  the  theory  of  his  languor — which  moreover 
was  real  enough  and  partly  perhaps  why  he  was  so 
sensitive;  he  let  himself  go  as  a  convalescent,  let  her 
insist  on  the  weakness  that  always  remained  after 
fever.  It  helped  him  to  gain  time,  to  preserve  the 
spell  even  while  he  talked  of  breaking  it;  saw  him 
through  slow  strolls  and  soft  sessions,  long  gossips, 
fitful,  hopeless  questions — there  was  so  much  more  to 
tell  than,  by  any  contortion,  she  could — and  explana 
tions  addressed  gallantly  and  patiently  to  her  under 
standing,  but  not,  by  good  fortune,  really  reaching  it. 
They  were  perfectly  at  cross-purposes,  and  it  was  all 
the  better,  and  they  wandered  together  in  the  silver 
haze  with  all  communication  blurred. 

When  they  sat  in  the  sun  in  her  formal  garden  he 
was  quite  aware  that  the  tenderest  consideration  failed 
to  disguise  his  treating  her  as  the  most  exquisite  of 
curiosities.  The  term  of  comparison  most  present  to 
him  was  that  of  some  obsolete  musical  instrument. 
The  old-time  order  of  her  mind  and  her  air  had  the 
stillness  of  a  painted  spinnet  that  was  duly  dusted, 
gently  rubbed,  but  never  tuned  nor  played  on.  Her 
opinions  were  like  dried  roseleaves;  her  attitudes  like 
British  sculpture;  her  voice  was  what  he  imagined  of 
the  possible  tone  of  the  old  gilded,  silver-stringed  harp 
in  one  of  the  corners  of  the  drawing-room.  The  lonely 
little  decencies  and  modest  dignities  of  her  life,  the 

158 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

fine  grain  of  its  conservatism,  the  innocence  of  its  ig 
norance,  all  its  monotony  of  stupidity  and  salubrity, 
its  cold  dulness  and  dim  brightness,  were  there  before 
him.  Meanwhile,  within  him,  strange  things  took 
place.  It  was  literally  true  that  his  impression  began 
again,  after  a  lull,  to  make  him  nervous  and  anxious, 
and  for  reasons  peculiarly  confused,  almost  grotesquely 
mingled,  or  at  least  comically  sharp.  He  was  distinct 
ly  an  agitation  and  a  new  taste — that  he  could  see; 
and  he  saw  quite  as  much  therefore  the  excitement  she 
already  drew  from  the  vision  of  Addie,  an  image  in 
tensified  by  the  sense  of  closer  kinship  and  presented 
to  her,  clearly,  with  various  erratic  enhancements,  by 
her  friend  the  doctor's  daughter.  At  the  end  of  a  few 
days  he  said  to  her :  "  Do  you  know  she  wants  to  come 
without  waiting  any  longer  ?  She  wants  to  come  while 
I'm  here.  I  received  this  morning  her  letter  proposing 
it,  but  I've  been  thinking  it  over  and  have  waited  to 
speak  to  you.  The  thing  is,  you  see,  that  if  she  writes 

to  you  proposing  it " 

"  Oh,  I  shall  be  so  particularly  glad !  " 


THEY  were,  as  usual,  in  the  garden,  and  it  had  not  yet 
been  so  present  to  him  that  if  he  were  only  a  happy 
cad  there  would  be  a  good  way  to  protect  her.  As  she 
wouldn't  hear  of  his  being  yet  beyond  precautions  she 
had  gone  into  the  house  for  a  particular  shawl  that 
was  just  the  thing  for  his  knees,  and,  blinking  in  the 
watery  sunshine,  had  come  back  with  it  across  the  fine 
little  lawn.  He  was  neither  fatuous  nor  asinine,  but 
he  had  almost  to  put  it  to  himself  as  a  small  task  to 
resist  the  sense  of  his  absurd  advantage  with  her.  It 
filled  him  with  horror  and  awkwardness,  made  him 
think  of  he  didn't  know  what,  recalled  something  of 
Maupassant's — the  smitten  "  Miss  Harriet "  and  her 

159 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

tragic  fate.  There  was  a  preposterous  possibility — yes, 
he  held  the  strings  quite  in  his  hands — of  keeping  the 
treasure  for  himself.  That  was  the  art  of  life — what 
the  real  artist  would  consistently  do.  He  would  close 
the  door  on  his  impression,  treat  it  as  a  private  museum. 
He  would  see  that  he  could  lounge  and  linger  there, 
live  with  wonderful  things  there,  lie  up  there  to  rest 
and  refit.  For  himself  he  was  sure  that  after  a  little 
he  should  be  able  to  paint  there — do  things  in  a  key 
he  had  never  thought  of  before.  When  she  brought 
him  the  rug  he  took  it  from  her  and  made  her  sit  down 
on  the  bench  and  resume  her  knitting;  then,  passing 
behind  her  with  a  laugh,  he  placed  it  over  her  own 
shoulders;  after  which  he  moved  to  and  fro  before 
her,  his  hands  in  his  pockets  and  his  cigarette  in  his 
teeth.  He  was  ashamed  of  the  cigarette — a  villainous 
false  note;  but  she  allowed,  liked,  begged  him  to 
smoke,  and  what  he  said  to  her  on  it,  in  one  of  the 
pleasantries  she  benevolently  missed,  was  that  he  did 
so  for  fear  of  doing  worse.  That  only  showed  that 
the  end  was  really  in  sight.  "  I  dare  say  it  will  strike 
you  as  quite  awful,  what  I'm  going  to  say  to  you,  but 
I  can't  help  it.  I  speak  out  of  the  depths  of  my  respect 
for  you.  It  will  seem  to  you  horrid  disloyalty  to  poor 
Addie.  Yes — there  we  are;  there  7  am,  at  least,  in 
my  naked  monstrosity."  He  stopped  and  looked  at 
her  till  she  might  have  been  almost  frightened.  "  Don't 
let  her  come.  Tell  her  not  to.  I've  tried  to  prevent  it, 
but  she  suspects." 

The  poor  woman  wondered.  "  Suspects  ?  " 
"  Well,  I  drew  it,  in  writing  to  her,  on  reflection,  as 
mild  as  I  could — having  been  visited,  in  the  watches 
of  the  night,  by  the  instinct  of  what  might  happen. 
Something  told  me  to  keep  back  my  first  letter — in 
which,  under  the  first  impression,  I  myself  rashly 
'  raved  ' ;  and  I  concocted  instead  of  it  an  insincere 
and  guarded  report.  But  guarded  as  I  was  I  clearly 

160 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

didn't  keep  you  '  down,'  as  we  say,  enough.  The  won 
der  of  your  colour — daub  you  over  with  grey  as  I 
might — must  have  come  through  and  told  the  tale. 
She  scents  battle  from  afar — by  which  I  mean  she 
scents  '  quaintness.'  But  keep  her  off.  It's  hideous, 
what  I'm  saying — but  I  owe  it  to  you.  I  owe  it  to 
the  world.  She'll  kill  you." 

"  You  mean  I  sha'n't  get  on  with  her  ?  " 
"  Oh,  fatally !     See  how  /  have.     She's  intelligent, 
remarkably  pretty,  remarkably  good.    And  she'll  adore 
you." 

"Well  then?" 

"  Why,  that  will  be  just  how  she'll  do  for  you." 
"  Oh,  I  can  hold  my  own !  "  said  Miss  Wenham  with 
the  head-shake  of  a  horse  making  his  sleigh-bells  rattle 
in  frosty  air. 

"  Ah,  but  you  can't  hold  hers !  She'll  rave  about  you. 
She'll  write  about  you.  You're  Niagara  before  the 
first  white  traveller — and  you  know,  or  rather  you  can't 
know,  what  Niagara  became  after  that  gentleman. 
Addie  will  have  discovered  Niagara.  She  will  under 
stand  you  in  perfection ;  she  will  feel  you  down  to  the 
ground ;  not  a  delicate  shade  of  you  will  she  lose  or  let 
anyone  else  lose.  You'll  be  too  weird  for  words,  but  the 
words  will  nevertheless  come.  You'll  be  too  exactly  the 
real  thing  and  to  be  left  too  utterly  just  as  you  are,  and 
all  Addie's  friends  and  all  Addie's  editors  and  contrib 
utors  and  readers  will  cross  the  Atlantic  and  flock  to 
Flickerbridge,  so,  unanimously,  universally,  vocifer 
ously,  to  leave  you.  You'll  be  in  the  magazines  with 
illustrations;  you'll  be  in  the  papers  with  headings; 
you'll  be  everywhere  with  everything.  You  don't  un 
derstand — you  think  you  do,  but  you  don't.  Heaven 
forbid  you  should  understand !  That's  just  your  beauty 
— your  *  sleeping  '  beauty.  But  you  needn't.  You  can 
take  me  on  trust.  Don't  have  her.  Say,  as  a  pretext, 
as  a  reason,  anything  in  the  world  you  like.  Lie  to 

161 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

her — scare  her  away.  I'll  go  away  and  give  you  up— 
I'll  sacrifice  everything  myself."  Granger  pursued  his 
exhortation,  convincing  himself  more  and  more.  "  If 
I  saw  my  way  out,  my  way  completely  through,  / 
would  pile  up  some  fabric  of  fiction  for  her — I  should 
only  want  to  be  sure  of  its  not  tumbling  down.  One 
would  have,  you  see,  to  keep  the  thing  up.  But  I 
would  throw  dust  in  her  eyes.  I  would  tell  her  that 
you  don't  do  at  all — that  you're  not,  in  fact,  a  desirable 
acquaintance.  I'd  tell  her  you're  vulgar,  improper, 
scandalous;  I'd  tell  her  you're  mercenary,  designing, 
dangerous;  I'd  tell  her  the  only  safe  course  is  im 
mediately  to  let  you  drop.  I  would  thus  surround  you 
with  an  impenetrable  legend  of  conscientious  misrepre 
sentation,  a  circle  of  pious  fraud,  and  all  the  while 
privately  keep  you  for  myself." 

She  had  listened  to  him  as  if  he  were  a  band  of  music 
and  she  a  small  shy  garden-party.  "  I  shouldn't  like 
you  to  go  away.  I  shouldn't  in  the  least  like  you  not 
to  come  again." 

"  Ah,  there  it  is !  "  he  replied.  "  How  can  I  come 
again  if  Addie  ruins  you  ?  " 

"  But  how  will  she  ruin  me — even  if  she  does  what 
you  say?  I  know  I'm  too  old  to  change  and  really 
much  too  queer  to  please  in  any  of  the  extraordinary 
ways  you  speak  of.  If  it's  a  question  of  quizzing  me 
I  don't  think  my  cousin,  or  anyone  else,  will  have  quite 
the  hand  for  it  that  you  seem  to  have.  So  that  if  you 
haven't  ruined  me !  " 

"  But  I  have — that's  just  the  point !  "  Granger  in 
sisted.  "  I've  undermined  you  at  least.  I've  left,  after 
all,  terribly  little  for  Addie  to  do." 

She  laughed  in  queer  tones.  "  Well,  then,  we'll  ad 
mit  that  you've  done  everything  but  frighten  me." 

He  looked  at  her  with  surpassing  gloom.  "  No — 
that  again  is  one  of  the  most  dreadful  features.  You'll 
positively  like  it — what's  to  come.  You'll  be  caught 

162 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

up  in  a  chariot  of  fire  like  the  prophet — wasn't  there, 
was  there,  one? — of  old.  That's  exactly  why — if  one 
could  but  have  done  it — you  would  have  been  to  be 
kept  ignorant  and  helpless.  There's  something  or 
other  in  Latin  that  says  that  it's  the  finest  things  that 
change  the  most  easily  for  the  worse.  You  already 
enjoy  your  dishonour  and  revel  in  your  shame.  It's 
too  late — you're  lost!  " 

VI 

ALL  this  was  as  pleasant  a  manner  of  passing  the  time 
as  any  other,  for  it  didn't  prevent  his  old-world  corner 
from  closing  round  him  more  entirely,  nor  stand  in  the 
way  of  his  making  out,  from  day  to  day,  some  new 
source,  as  well  as  some  new  effect,  of  its  virtue.  He 
was  really  scared  at  moments  at  some  of  the  liberties 
he  took  in  talk — at  finding  himself  so  familiar ;  for  the 
great  note  of  the  place  was  just  that  a  certain  modern 
ease  had  never  crossed  its  threshold,  that  quick  in 
timacies  and  quick  oblivions  were  a  stranger  to  its  air. 
It  had  known,  in  all  its  days,  no  rude,  no  loud  in 
vasion.  Serenely  unconscious  of  most  contempo 
rary  things,  it  had  been  so  of  nothing  so  much  as  of 
the  diffused  social  practice  of  running  in  and  out. 
Granger  held  his  breath,  on  occasions,  to  think  how 
Addie  would  run.  There  were  moments  when,  for 
some  reason,  more  than  at  others,  he  heard  her  step  on 
the  stair-case  and  her  cry  in  the  hall.  If  he  played 
freely,  none  the  less,  with  the  idea  with  which  we  have 
shown  him  as  occupied,  it  was  not  that  in  every  meas 
urable  way  he  didn't  sacrifice,  to  the  utmost,  to  still 
ness.  He  only  hovered,  ever  so  lightly,  to  take  up 
again  his  thread.  She  wouldn't  hear  of  his  leaving  her, 
of  his  being  in  the  least  fit  again,  as  she  said,  to  travel. 
She  spoke  of  the  journey  to  London — which  was  in 
fact  a  matter  of  many  hours — as  an  experiment  fraught 

163 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

with  lurking  complications.  He  added  then  day  to  day, 
yet  only  hereby,  as  he  reminded  her,  giving  other  com 
plications  a  larger  chance  to  multiply.  He  kept  it  be 
fore  her,  when  there  was  nothing  else  to  do,  that  she 
must  consider;  after  which  he  had  his  times  of  fear 
that  she  perhaps  really  would  make  for  him  this  sacri 
fice. 

He  knew  that  she  had  written  again  to  Paris,  and 
knew  that  he  must  himself  again  write — a  situation 
abounding  for  each  in  the  elements  of  a  quandary.  If 
he  stayed  so  long,  why  then  he  wasn't  better,  and  if  he 

wasn't  better  Addie  might  take  it  into  her  head ! 

They  must  make  it  clear  that  he  was  better,  so  that, 
suspicious,  alarmed  at  what  was  kept  from  her,  she 
shouldn't  suddenly  present  herself  to  nurse  him.  If 
he  was  better,  however,  why  did  he  stay  so  long?  If 
he  stayed  only  for  the  attraction  the  sense  of  the  attrac 
tion  might  be  contagious.  This  was  what  finally  grew 
clearest  for  him,  so  that  he  had  for  his  mild  disciple 
hours  of  still  sharper  prophecy.  It  consorted  with  his 
fancy  to  represent  to  her  that  their  young  friend  had 
been  by  this  time  unsparingly  warned;  but  nothing 
could  be  plainer  than  that  this  was  ineffectual  so  long 
as  he  himself  resisted  the  ordeal.  To  plead  that  he  re 
mained  because  he  was  too  weak  to  move  was  only  to 
throw  themselves  back  on  the  other  horn  of  their  di 
lemma.  If  he  was  too  weak  to  move  Addie  would 
bring  him  her  strength — of  which,  when  she  got  there, 
she  would  give  them  specimens  enough.  One  morn 
ing  he  broke  out  at  breakfast  with  an  intimate  convic 
tion.  They  would  see  that  she  was  actually  starting 
— they  would  receive  a  wire  by  noon.  They  didn't 
receive  it,  but  by  his  theory  the  portent  was  only  the 
stronger.  It  had,  moreover,  its  grave  as  well  as  its 
gay  side,  for  Granger's  paradox  and  pleasantry  were 
only  the  most  convenient  way  for  him  of  saying  what 
he  felt.  He  literally  heard  the  knell  sound,  and  in 

164 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

expressing  this  to  Miss  Wenham  with  the  conversa 
tional  freedom  that  seemed  best  to  pay  his  way  he  the 
more  vividly  faced  the  contingency.  He  could  never 
return,  and  though  he  announced  it  with  a  despair 
that  did  what  might  be  to  make  it  pass  as  a  joke, 
he  saw  that,  whether  or  no  she  at  last  understood, 
she  quite  at  last  believed  him.  On  this,  to  his  knowl 
edge,  she  wrote  again  to  Addie,  and  the  contents  of  her 
letter  excited  his  curiosity.  But  that  sentiment,  though 
not  assuaged,  quite  dropped  when,  the  day  after,  in 
the  evening,  she  let  him  know  that  she  had  had,  an 
hour  before,  a  telegram. 

"  She  comes  Thursday." 

He  showed  not  the  least  surprise.  It  was  the  deep 
calm  of  the  fatalist.  It  had  to  be.  "  I  must  leave  you 
then  to-morrow." 

She  looked,  on  this,  as  he  had  never  seen  her;  it 
would  have  been  hard  to  say  whether  what  was  in 
her  face  was  the  last  failure  to  follow  or  the  first  effort 
to  meet.  "  And  really  not  to  come  back  ?  " 

"  Never,  never,  dear  lady.  Why  should  I  come 
back?  You  can  never  be  again  what  you  have  been. 
I  shall  have  seen  the  last  of  you." 

"  Oh !  "  she  touchingly  urged. 

'  Yes,  for  I  should  next  find  you  simply  brought  to 
self-consciousness.  You'll  be  exactly  what  you  are,  I 
charitably  admit — nothing  more  or  less,  nothing  dif 
ferent.  But  you'll  be  it  all  in  a  different  way.  We 
live  in  an  age  of  prodigious  machinery,  all  organised 
to  a  single  end.  That  end  is  publicity — a  publicity  as 
ferocious  as  the  appetite  of  a  cannibal.  The  thing  there 
fore  is  not  to  have  any  illusions — fondly  to  flatter  your 
self,  in  a  muddled  moment,  that  the  cannibal  will  spare 
you.  He  spares  nobody.  He  spares  nothing.  It  will 
be  all  right.  You'll  have  a  lovely  time.  You'll  be  only 
just  a  public  character — blown  about  the  world  for  all 
you  are  and  proclaimed  for  all  you  are  on  the  housetops. 

165 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

It  will  be  for  that,  mind,  I  quite  recognise — because 
Addie  is  superior — as  well  as  for  all  you  aren't.  So 
good-bye." 

He  remained,  however,  till  the  next  day,  and  noted 
at  intervals  the  different  stages  of  their  friend's  jour 
ney  ;  the  hour,  this  time,  she  would  really  have  started, 
the  hour  she  would  reach  Dover,  the  hour  she  would 
get  to  town,  where  she  would  alight  at  Mrs.  Dunn's. 
Perhaps  she  would  bring  Mrs.  Dunn,  for  Mrs.  Dunn 
would  swell  the  chorus.  At  the  last,  on  the  morrow, 
as  if  in  anticipation  of  this,  stillness  settled  between 
them;  he  became  as  silent  as  his  hostess.  But  before 
he  went  she  brought  out,  shyly  and  anxiously,  as  an 
appeal,  the  question  that,  for  hours,  had  clearly  been 
giving  her  thought.  "  Do  you  meet  her  then  to-night 
in  London  ?  " 

"  Dear,  no.  In  what  position  am  I,  alas !  to  do 
that?  When  can  I  ever  meet  her  again?"  He  had 
turned  it  all  over.  "  If  I  could  meet  Addie  after  this, 
you  know,  I  could  meet  you.  And  if  I  do  meet  Addie," 
he  lucidly  pursued,  "  what  will  happen,  by  the  same 
stroke,  is  that  I  shall  meet  you.  And  that's  just  what 
I've  explained  to  you  that  I  dread." 

"  You  mean  that  she  and  I  will  be  inseparable  ?  " 

He  hesitated.  "  I  mean  that  she'll  tell  me  all  about 
you.  I  can  hear  her,  and  her  ravings,  now." 

She  gave  again — and  it  was  infinitely  sad — her  little 
whinnying  laugh.  "  Oh,  but  if  what  you  say  is  true, 
you'll  know." 

"  Ah,  but  Addie  won't !  Won't,  I  mean,  know  that 
I  know — or  at  least  won't  believe  it.  Won't  believe 
that  anyone  knows.  Such,"  he  added,  with  a  strange, 
smothered  sigh,  "  is  Addie.  Do  you  know,"  he  wound 
up,  "  that  what,  after  all,  has  most  definitely  happened 
is  that  you've  made  me  see  her  as  I've  never  done 
before?" 

She  blinked  and  gasped,  she  wondered  and  despaired. 
166 


FLICKERBRIDGE 

"  Oh,  no,  it  will  be  you.  I've  had  nothing  to  do  with 
it.  Everything's  all  you !  " 

But  for  all  it  mattered  now!  "  You'll  see,"  he  said, 
"  that  she's  charming.  I  shall  go,  for  to-night,  to  Ox 
ford.  I  shall  almost  cross  her  on  the  way." 

"  Then,  if  she's  charming,  what  am  I  to  tell  her 
from  you  in  explanation  of  such  strange  behaviour  as 
your  flying  away  just  as  she  arrives  ?  " 

"  Ah,  you  needn't  mind  about  that — you  needn't  tell 
her  anything." 

She  fixed  him  as  if  as  never  again.  "  It's  none  of  my 
business,  of  course  I  feel ;  but  isn't  it  a  little  cruel  if 
you're  engaged  ?  " 

Granger  gave  a  laugh  almost  as  odd  as  one  of  her 
own.  "  Oh,  you've  cost  me  that !  "  and  he  put  out  his 
hand  to  her. 

She  wondered  while  she  took  it.    "  Cost  you ?  " 

"  We're  not  engaged.    Good-bye." 


THE  STORY  IN  IT 


THE  weather  had  turned  so  much  worse  that  the 
rest  of  the  day  was  certainly  lost.  The  wind  had 
risen  and  the  storm  gathered  force;  they  gave  from 
time  to  time  a  thump  at  the  firm  windows  and  dashed 
even  against  those  protected  by  the  verandah  their 
vicious  splotches  of  rain.  Beyond  the  lawn,  beyond 
the  cliff,  the  great  wet  brush  of  the  sky  dipped  deep 
into  the  sea.  But  the  lawn,  already  vivid  with  the 
touch  of  May,  showed  a  violence  of  watered  green; 
the  budding  shrubs  and  trees  repeated  the  note  as  they 
tossed  their  thick  masses,  and  the  cold,  troubled  light, 
filling  the  pretty  drawing-room,  marked  the  spring 
afternoon  as  sufficiently  young.  The  two  ladies  seated 
there  in  silence  could  pursue  without  difficulty — as 
well  as,  clearly,  without  interruption — their  respective 
tasks;  a  confidence  expressed,  when  the  noise  of  the 
wind  allowed  it  to  be  heard,  by  the  sharp  scratch  of 
Mrs.  Dyott's  pen  at  the  table  where  she  was  busy  with 
letters. 

Her  visitor,  settled  on  a  small  sofa  that,  with  a  palm- 
tree,  a  screen,  a  stool,  a  stand,  a  bowl  of  flowers  and 
three  photographs  in  silver  frames,  had  been  arranged 
near  the  light  wood-fire  as  a  choice  "  corner  " — Maud 
Blessingbourne,  her  guest,  turned  audibly,  though  at 
intervals  neither  brief  nor  regular,  the  leaves  of  a  book, 
covered  in  lemon-coloured  paper  and  not  yet  despoiled 

168 


THE   STORY    IN    IT 

of  a  certain  fresh  crispness.  This  effect  of  the  volume, 
for  the  eye,  would  have  made  it,  as  presumably  the 
newest  French  novel — and  evidently,  from  the  attitude 
of  the  reader,  "  good  " — consort  happily  with  the 
special  tone  of  the  room,  a  consistent  air  of  selection 
and  suppression,  one  of  the  finer  aesthetic  evolutions. 
If  Mrs.  Dyott  was  fond  of  ancient  French  furniture, 
and  distinctly  difficult  about  it,  her  inmates  could  be 
fond — with  whatever  critical  cocks  of  charming  dark- 
braided  heads  over  slender  sloping  shoulders — of  mod 
ern  French  authors.  Nothing  had  passed  for  half  an 
hour — nothing,  at  least,  to  be  exact,  but  that  each  of 
the  companions  occasionally  and  covertly  intermitted 
her  pursuit  in  such  a  manner  as  to  ascertain  the  degree 
of  absorption  of  the  other  without  turning  round. 
What  their  silence  was  charged  with,  therefore,  was 
not  only  a  sense  of  the  weather,  but  a  sense,  so  to  speak, 
of  its  own  nature.  Maud  Blessingbourne,  when  she 
lowered  her  book  into  her  lap,  closed  her  eyes  with  a 
conscious  patience  that  seemed  to  say  she  waited;  but 
it  was  nevertheless  she  who  at  last  made  the  movement 
representing  a  snap  of  their  tension.  She  got  up  and 
stood  by  the  fire,  into  which  she  looked  a  minute ;  then 
came  round  and  approached  the  window  as  if  to  see 
what  was  really  going  on.  At  this  Mrs.  Dyott  wrote 
with  refreshed  intensity.  Her  little  pile  of  letters  had 
grown,  and  if  a  look  of  determination  was  compatible 
with  her  fair  and  slightly  faded  beauty,  the  habit  of 
attending  to  her  business  could  always  keep  pace  with 
any  excursion  of  her  thought.  Yet  she  was  the  first 
who  spoke. 

"  I  trust  your  book  has  been  interesting." 

"  Well  enough;  a  little  mild." 

A  louder  throb  of  the  tempest  had  blurred  the  sound 
of  the  words.  "  A  little  wild?  " 

"  Dear,  no — timid  and  tame ;  unless  I've  quite  lost 
my  sense." 

169 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Perhaps  you  have,"  Mrs.  Dyott  placidly  suggested 
— "  reading  so  many." 

Her  companion  made  a  motion  of  feigned  despair. 
"  Ah,  you  take  away  my  courage  for  going  to  my  room, 
as  I  was  just  meaning  to,  for  another." 

"  Another  French  one?  " 

"  I'm  afraid." 

"  Do  you  carry  them  by  the  dozen " 

"  Into  innocent  British  homes?  "  Maud  tried  to  re 
member.  "  I  believe  I  brought  three — seeing  them  in 
a  shop  window  as  I  passed  through  town.  It  never 
rains  but  it  pours !  But  I've  already  read  two." 

"  And  are  they  the  only  ones  you  do  read?  " 

"  French  ones  ?  "  Maud  considered.  "  Oh,  no. 
D'Annunzio." 

"And  what's  that?"  Mrs.  Dyott  asked  as  she  af 
fixed  a  stamp. 

"Oh,  you  dear  thing!"  Her  friend  was  amused, 
yet  almost  showed  pity.  "  I  know  you  don't  read," 
Maud  went  on ;  "  but  why  should  you  ?  You  live !  " 

"  Yes — wretchedly  enough,"  Mrs.  Dyott  returned, 
getting  her  letters  together.  She  left  her  place,  hold 
ing  them  as  a  neat,  achieved  handful,  and  came  over 
to  the  fire,  while  Mrs.  Blessingbourne  turned  once  more 
to  the  window,  where  she  was  met  by  another  flurry. 

Maud  spoke  then  as  if  moved  only  by  the  elements. 
"  Do  you  expect  him  through  all  this?  " 

Mrs.  Dyott  just  waited,  and  it  had  the  effect,  in 
describably,  of  making  everything  that  had  gone  before 
seem  to  have  led  up  to  the  question.  This  effect  was 
even  deepened  by  the  way  she  then  said,  "  Whom  do 
you  mean  ?  " 

"  Why,  I  thought  you  mentioned  at  luncheon  that 
Colonel  Voyt  was  to  walk  over.  Surely  he  can't." 

"  Do  you  care  very  much  ?  "  Mrs.  Dyott  asked. 

Her  friend  now  hesitated.  "  It  depends  on  what 
you  call  '  much.'  If  you  mean  should  I  like  to  see  him 
— then  certainly." 

170 


THE   STORY    IN    IT 

"  Well,  my  dear,  I  think  he  understands  you're 
here." 

"  So  that  as  he  evidently  isn't  coming,"  Maud 
laughed,  "  it's  particularly  flattering!  Or  rather,"  she 
added,  giving  up  the  prospect  again,  "  it  would  be,  I 
think,  quite  extraordinarily  flattering  if  he  did.  Ex 
cept  that,  of  course,"  she  subjoined,  "  he  might  come 
partly  for  you." 

"  '  Partly  '  is  charming.  Thank  you  for  '  partly.' 
If  you  are  going  upstairs,  will  you  kindly,"  Mrs.  Dyott 
pursued,  "  put  these  into  the  box  as  you  pass?  " 

The  younger  woman,  taking  the  little  pile  of  letters, 
considered  them  with  envy.  "  Nine !  You  are  good. 
You're  always  a  living  reproach !  " 

Mrs.  Dyott  gave  a  sigh.  "  I  don't  do  it  on  purpose. 
The  only  thing,  this  afternoon,"  she  went  on,  reverting 
to  the  other  question,  "  would  be  their  not  having  come 
down." 

"  And  as  to  that  you  don't  know." 

"  No — I  don't  know."  But  she  caught  even  as  she 
spoke  a  rat-tat-tat  of  the  knocker,  which  struck  her  as 
a  sign.  "Ah,  there!" 

"  Then  I  go."    And  Maud  whisked  out. 

Mrs.  Dyott,  left  alone,  moved  with  an  air  of  selection 
to  the  window,  and  it  was  as  so  stationed,  gazing  out 
at  the  wild  weather,  that  the  visitor,  whose  delay  to 
appear  spoke  of  the  wiping  of  boots  and  the  disposal 
of  drenched  mackintosh  and  cap,  finally  found  her. 
He  was  tall,  lean,  fine,  with  little  in  him,  on  the  whole, 
to  confirm  the  titular  in  the  "  Colonel  Voyt  "  by  which 
he  was  announced.  But  he  had  left  the  army,  and  his 
reputation  for  gallantry  mainly  depended  now  on  his 
fighting  Liberalism  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Even 
these  facts,  however,  his  aspect  scantly  matched; 
partly,  no  doubt,  because  he  looked,  as  was  usually  said, 
un-English.  His  black  hair,  cropped  close,  was  lightly 
powdered  with  silver,  and  his  dense  glossy  beard, 

171 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

that  of  an  emir  or  a  caliph,  and  grown  for  civil  reasons, 
repeated  its  handsome  colour  and  its  somewhat  foreign 
effect.  His  nose  had  a  strong  and  shapely  arch,  and 
the  dark  grey  of  his  eyes  was  tinted  with  blue.  It  had 
been  said  of  him — in  relation  to  these  signs — that  he 
would  have  struck  you  as  a  Jew  had  he  not,  in  spite 
of  his  nose,  struck  you  so  much  as  an  Irishman. 
Neither  responsibility  could  in  fact  have  been  fixed 
upon  him,  and  just  now,  at  all  events,  he  was  only  a 
pleasant,  weather-washed,  wind-battered  Briton,  who 
brought  in  from  a  struggle  with  the  elements  that  he 
appeared  quite  to  have  enjoyed  a  certain  amount  of  un- 
removed  mud  and  an  unusual  quantity  of  easy  expres 
sion.  It  was  exactly  the  silence  ensuing  on  the  retreat 
of  the  servant  and  the  closed  door  that  marked  between 
him  and  his  hostess  the  degree  of  this  ease.  They  met, 
as  it  were,  twice :  the  first  time  while  the  servant  was 
there  and  the  second  as  soon  as  he  was  not.  The  dif 
ference  \vas  great  between  the  two  encounters,  though 
we  must  add  in  justice  to  the  second  that  its  marks 
were  at  first  mainly  negative.  This  communion  con 
sisted  only  in  their  having  drawn  each  other  for  a 
minute  as  close  as  possible — as  possible,  that  is,  with 
no  help  but  the  full  clasp  of  hands.  Thus  they  were 
mutually  held,  and  the  closeness  was  at  any  rate  such 
that,  for  a  little,  though  it  took  account  of  dangers, 
it  did  without  words.  When  words  presently  came  the 
pair  were  talking  by  the  fire,  and  she  had  rung  for  tea. 
He  had  by  this  time  asked  if  the  note  he  had  despatched 
to  her  after  breakfast  had  been  safely  delivered. 

"  Yes,  before  luncheon.  But  I'm  always  in  a  state 
when — except  for  some  extraordinary  reason — you 
send  such  things  by  hand.  I  knew,  without  it,  that 
you  had  come.  It  never  fails.  I'm  sure  when  you're 
there — I'm  sure  when  you're  not." 

He  wiped,  before  the  glass,  his  wet  moustache.  "  I 
see.  But  this  morning  I  had  an  impulse." 

172 


THE   STORY    IN    IT 

"  It  was  beautiful.  But  they  make  me  as  uneasy, 
sometimes,  your  impulses,  as  if  they  were  calculations ; 
make  me  wonder  what  you  have  in  reserve." 

"  Because  wrhen  small  children  are  too  awfully  good 
they  die  ?  Well,  I  am  a  small  child  compared  to  you — 
but  I'm  not  dead  yet.  I  cling  to  life." 

He  had  covered  her  with  his  smile,  but  she  con 
tinued  grave.  "  I'm  not  half  so  much  afraid  when 
you're  nasty." 

"  Thank  you !  What  then  did  you  do,"  he  asked, 
"with  my  note?" 

"  You  deserve  that  I  should  have  spread  it  out  on 
my  dressing-table — or  left  it,  better  still,  in  Maud 
Blessingbourne's  room." 

He  wondered  while  he  laughed.  "  Oh,  but  what 
does  she  deserve  ?  " 

It  was  her  gravity  that  continued  to  answer.  "  Yes 
— it  would  probably  kill  her." 

"  She  believes  so  in  you?  " 

"  She  believes  so  in  yon.  So  don't  be  too  nice  to 
her." 

He  was  still  looking,  in  the  chimney-glass,  at  the 
state  of  his  beard — brushing  from  it,  with  his  hand 
kerchief,  the  traces  of  wind  and  wet.  "  If  she  also 
then  prefers  me  when  I'm  nasty,  it  seems  to  me  I  ought 
to  satisfy  her.  Shall  I  now,  at  any  rate,  see  her  ?  " 

"  She's  so  like  a  pea  on  a  pan  over  the  possibility  of 
it  that  she's  pulling  herself  together  in  her  room." 

"  Oh  then,  we  must  try  and  keep  her  together.  But 
why,  graceful,  tender,  pretty  too — quite,  or  almost — 
as  she  is,  doesn't  she  remarry?  " 

Mrs.  Dyott  appeared — and  as  if  the  first  time — to 
look  for  the  reason.  "  Because  she  likes  too  many 
men." 

It  kept  up  his  spirits.  "  And  how  many  may  a  lady 
like ?" 

"  In  order  not  to  like  any  of  them  too  much  ?    Ah, 

173 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

that,  you  know,  I  never  found  out — and  it's  too  late 
now.  When,"  she  presently  pursued,  "  did  you  last 
see  her?" 

He  really  had  to  think.  "  Would  it  have  been  since 
last  November  or  so? — somewhere  or  other  where  we 
spent  three  days." 

"  Oh,  at  Surredge  ?  I  know  all  about  that.  I 
thought  you  also  met  afterwards." 

He  had  again  to  recall.  "  So  we  did !  Wouldn't  it 
have  been  somewhere  at  Christmas?  But  it  wasn't  by 
arrangement !  "  he  laughed,  giving  with  his  forefinger 
a  little  pleasant  nick  to  his  hostess's  chin.  Then  as  if 
something  in  the  way  she  received  this  attention  put 
him  back  to  his  question  of  a  moment  before.  "  Have 
you  kept  my  note  ?  " 

She  held  him  with  her  pretty  eyes.  "  Do  you  want 
it  back?" 

"  Ah,  don't  speak  as  if  I  did  take  things !  " 

She  dropped  her  gaze  to  the  fire.  "  No,  you  don't ; 
not  even  the  hard  things  a  really  generous  nature  often 
would."  She  quitted,  however,  as  if  to  forget  that, 
the  chimney-place.  "  I  put  it  there!  " 

"You've  burnt  it?  Good!"  It  made  him  easier, 
but  he  noticed  the  next  moment  on  a  table  the  lemon- 
coloured  volume  left  there  by  Mrs.  Blessingbourne, 
and,  taking  it  up  for  a  look,  immediately  put  it  down. 
"  You  might,  while  you  were  about  it,  have  burnt  that 
too." 

"You've  read  it?" 

"Dear,  yes.     And  you?" 

"  No,"  said  Mrs.  Dyott ;  "  it  wasn't  for  me  Maud 
brought  it." 

It  pulled  her  visitor  up.  "  Mrs.  Blessingbourne 
brought  it?" 

"  For  such  a  day  as  this."  But  she  wondered. 
"  How  you  look !  Is  it  so  awful  ?  " 

"  Oh,  like  his   others."       Something   had  occurred 

174 


THE   STORY    IN    IT 

to  him;  his  thought  was  already  far.  "Does  she 
know?" 

"Know  what?" 

"  Why,  anything." 

But  the  door  opened  too  soon  for  Mrs.  Dyott,  who 
could  only  murmur  quickly — 

"Take  care!" 

II 

IT  was  in  fact  Mrs.  Blessingbourne,  who  had  under 
her  arm  the  book  she  had  gone  up  for — a  pair  of 
covers  that  this  time  showed  a  pretty,  a  candid  blue. 
She  was  followed  next  minute  by  the  servant,  who 
brought  in  tea,  the  consumption  of  which,  with  the 
passage  of  greetings,  inquiries  and  other  light  civilities 
between  the  two  visitors,  occupied  a  quarter  of  an  hour. 
Mrs.  Dyott  meanwhile,  as  a  contribution  to  so  much 
amenity,  mentioned  to  Maud  that  her  fellow-guest 
wished  to  scold  her  for  the  books  she  read — a  state 
ment  met  by  this  friend  with  the  remark  that  he  must 
first  be  sure  about  them.  But  as  soon  as  he  had  picked 
up  the  new  volume  he  broke  out  into  a  frank  "  Dear, 
dear!" 

"Have  you  read  that  too?"  Mrs.  Dyott  inquired. 
"  How  much  you'll  have  to  talk  over  together !  The 
other  one,"  she  explained  to  him,  "  Maud  speaks  of  as 
terribly  tame." 

"  Ah,  I  must  have  that  out  with  her !  You  don't 
feel  the  extraordinary  force  of  the  fellow  ?  "  Voyt  went 
on  to  Mrs.  Blessingbourne. 

And  so,  round  the  hearth,  they  talked — talked  soon, 
while  they  warmed  their  toes,  with  zest  enough  to 
make  it  seem  as  happy  a  chance  as  any  of  the  quieter 
opportunities  their  imprisonment  might  have  involved. 
Mrs.  Blessingbourne  did  feel,  it  then  appeared,  the 
force  of  the  fellow,  but  she  had  her  reserves  and  re- 

T75 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

actions,  in  which  Voyt  was  much  interested.  Mrs. 
Dyott  rather  detached  herself,  mainly  gazing,  as  she 
leaned  back,  at  the  fire;  she  intervened,  however, 
enough  to  relieve  Maud  of  the  sense  of  being  listened 
to.  That  sense,  with  Maud,  was  too  apt  to  convey  that 
one  was  listened  to  for  a  fool.  "  Yes,  when  I  read  a 
novel  I  mostly  read  a  French  one,"  she  had  said  to 
Voyt  in  answer  to  a  question  about  her  usual  practice ; 
"  for  I  seem  with  it  to  get  hold  more  of  the  real  thing — 
to  get  more  life  for  my  money.  Only  I'm  not  so  in 
fatuated  with  them  but  that  sometimes  for  months  and 
months  on  end  I  don't  read  any  fiction  at  all." 

The  two  books  were  now  together  beside  them. 
"  Then  when  you  begin  again  you  read  a  mass  ?  " 

"  Dear,  no.  I  only  keep  up  with  three  or  four 
authors." 

He  laughed  at  this  over  the  cigarette  he  had  been 
allowed  to  light.  "  I  like  your  '  keeping  up,'  and  keep 
ing  up  in  particular  with  *  authors.'  ' 

"  One  must  keep  up  with  somebody,"  Mrs.  Dyott 
threw  off. 

"  I  dare  say  I'm  ridiculous,"  Mrs.  Blessingbourne 
conceded  without  heeding  it ;  "  but  that's  the  way  we 
express  ourselves  in  my  part  of  the  country." 

"  I  only  alluded,"  said  Voyt,  "  to  the  tremendous 
conscience  of  your  sex.  It's  more  than  mine  can  keep 
up  with.  You  take  everything  too  hard.  But  if  you 
can't  read  the  novel  of  British  and  American  manu 
facture,  heaven  knows  I'm  at  one  with  you.  It  seems 
really  to  show  our  sense  of  life  as  the  sense  of  puppies 
and  kittens." 

"  Well,"  Maud  more  patiently  returned,  "  I'm  told 
all  sorts  of  people  are  now  doing  wonderful  things; 
but  somehow  I  remain  outside." 

"  Ah,  it's  they,  it's  our  poor  twangers  and  twaddlers 
who  remain  outside.  They  pick  up  a  living  in  the 
street.  And  who  indeed  would  want  them  in  ?  " 

176 


THE   STORY    IN   IT 

Mrs.  Blessingbourne  seemed  unable  to  say,  and  yet 
at  the  same  time  to  have  her  idea.  The  subject,  in  truth, 
she  evidently  found,  was  not  so  easy  to  handle.  "  Peo 
ple  lend  me  things,  and  I  try;  but  at  the  end  of  fifty 
pages " 

'  There  you  are !     Yes — heaven  help  us ! ' 

"  But  what  I  mean,"  she  went  on,  "  isn't  that  I  don't 
get  wofully  weary  of  the  eternal  French  thing.  What's 
their  sense  of  life?  " 

"  Ah,  voila!  "  Mrs.  Dyott  softly  sounded. 

"  Oh,  but  it  is  one ;  you  can  make  it  out,"  Voyt 
promptly  declared.  "  They  do  what  they  feel,  and  they 
feel  more  things  than  we.  They  strike  so  many  more 
notes,  and  with  so  different  a  hand.  When  it  comes 
to  any  account  of  a  relation,  say,  between  a  man  and 
a  woman — I  mean  an  intimate  or  a  curious  or  a  sug 
gestive  one — where  are  we  compared  to  them?  They 
don't  exhaust  the  subject,  no  doubt,"  he  admitted; 
"  but  we  don't  touch  it,  don't  even  skim  it.  It's  as  if 
we  denied  its  existence,  its  possibility.  You'll  doubt 
less  tell  me,  however,"  he  went  on,  "  that  as  all  such 
relations  arc  for  us,  at  the  most,  much  simpler,  we  can 
only  have  all  round  less  to  say  about  them." 

She  met  this  imputation  with  the  quickest  amuse 
ment.  "  I  beg  your  pardon.  I  don't  think  I  shall  tell 
you  anything  of  the  sort.  I  don't  know  that  I  even 
agree  with  your  premise." 

"  About  such  relations?  "  He  looked  agreeably  sur 
prised.  "  You  think  we  make  them  larger  ? — or  subt 
ler?" 

Mrs.  Blessingbourne  leaned  back,  not  looking,  like 
Mrs.  Dyott,  at  the  fire,  but  at  the  ceiling.  "  I  don't 
know  what  I  think." 

"  It's  not  that  she  doesn't  know,"  Mrs.  Dyott  re 
marked.  "  It's  only  that  she  doesn't  say." 

But  Voyt  had  this  time  no  eye  for  their  hostess. 
For  a  moment  he  watched  Maud.  "  It  sticks  out  of 

177 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

you,  you  know,  that  you've  yourself  written  something. 
Haven't  you — and  published?  I've  a  notion  I  could 
read  you" 

11  When  I  do  publish,"  she  said  without  moving, 
"  you'll  be  the  last  one  I  shall  tell.  I  have"  she  went 
on,  "  a  lovely  subject,  but  it  would  take  an  amount  of 
treatment !" 

"  Tell  us  then  at  least  what  it  is." 

At  this  she  again  met  his  eyes.  "  Oh,  to  tell  it  would 
be  to  express  it,  and  that's  just  what  I  can't  do.  What 
I  meant  to  say  just  now,"  she  added,  "  was  that  the 
French,  to  my  sense,  give  us  only  again  and  again,  for 
ever  and  ever,  the  same  couple.  There  they  are  once 
more,  as  one  has  had  them  to  satiety,  in  that  yellow 
thing,  and  there  I  shall  certainly  again  find  them  in 
the  blue." 

"  Then  why  do  you  keep  reading  about  them  ?  "  Mrs. 
Dyott  demanded. 

Maud  hesitated.  "  I  don't!  "  she  sighed.  "  At  all 
events,  I  sha'n't  any  more.  I  give  it  up." 

"  You've  been  looking  for  something,  I  judge,"  said 
Colonel  Voyt,  "  that  you're  not  likely  to  find.  It 
doesn't  exist." 

"  What  is  it?  "  Mrs.  Dyott  inquired. 

"  I  never  look,"  Maud  remarked,  "  for  anything  but 
an  interest." 

"  Naturally.  But  your  interest,"  Voyt  replied,  "  is 
in  something  different  from  life." 

"  Ah,  not  a  bit !  I  love  life — in  art,  though  I  hate 
it  anywhere  else.  It's  the  poverty  of  the  life  those 
people  show,  and  the  awful  bounders,  of  both  sexes, 
that  they  represent." 

"  Oh,  now  we  have  you !  "  her  interlocutor  laughed. 
"  To  me,  when  all's  said  and  done,  they  seem  to  be — 
as  near  as  art  can  come — in  the  truth  of  the  truth. 
It  can  only  take  what  life  gives  it,  though  it  certainly 
may  be  a  pity  that  that  isn't  better.  Your  complaint 

178 


THE   STORY   IN   IT 

of  their  monotony  is  a  complaint  of  their  conditions. 
When  you  say  we  get  always  the  same  couple  what  do 
you  mean  but  that  we  get  always  the  same  passion? 
Of  course  we  do !  "  Voyt  declared.  "  If  what  you're 
looking  for  is  another,  that's  what  you  won't  anywhere 
find." 

Maud  for  a  while  said  nothing,  and  Mrs.  Dyott 
seemed  to  wait.  "  Well,  I  suppose  I'm  looking,  more 
than  anything  else,  for  a  decent  woman." 

"  Oh  then,  you  mustn't  look  for  her  in  pictures  of 
passion.  That's  not  her  element  nor  her  whereabouts." 

Mrs.  Blessingbourne  weighed  the  objection. 
"  Doesn't  it  depend  on  what  you  mean  by  passion  ?  " 

"  I  think  one  can  mean  only  one  thing :  the  enemy 
to  behaviour." 

"  Oh,  I  can  imagine  passions  that  are,  on  the  con 
trary,  friends  to  it." 

Her  interlocutor  thought.  "  Doesn't  it  depend  per 
haps  on  what  you  mean  by  behaviour  ?  " 

"  Dear,  no.  Behaviour  is  just  behaviour — the  most 
definite  thing  in  the  world." 

'''  Then  what  do  you  mean  by  the  *  interest '  you 
just  now  spoke  of?  The  picture  of  that  definite 
thing?" 

'  Yes — call  it  that.  Women  aren't  always  vicious, 
even  when  they're " 

"  When  they're  what?  "  Voyt  asked. 

"  When  they're  unhappy.  They  can  be  unhappy  and 
good." 

"  That  one  doesn't  for  a  moment  deny.  But  can 
they  be  '  good  '  and  interesting?  " 

"  That  must  be  Maud's  subject !  "  Mrs.  Dyott  ex 
plained.  '  To  show  a  woman  who  is.  I'm  afraid,  my 
dear,"  she  continued,  "  you  could  only  show  yourself." 

;<  You'd  show  then  the  most  beautiful  specimen  con 
ceivable  " — and  Voyt  addressed  himself  to  Maud. 
"  But  doesn't  it  prove  that  life  is,  against  your  conten- 

179 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

tion,  more  interesting  than  art?  Life  you  embellish 
and  elevate;  but  art  would  find  itself  able  to  do  noth 
ing  with  you,  and,  on  such  impossible  terms,  would 
ruin  you." 

The  colour  in  her  faint  consciousness  gave  beauty 
to  her  stare.  "  '  Ruin  '  me?  " 

"  He  means,"  Mrs.  Dyott  again  indicated,  "that  you 
would  ruin  '  art.' ' 

"  Without,  on  the  other  hand  " — Voyt  seemed  to 
assent — "  its  giving  at  all  a  coherent  impression  of 
you." 

"  She  wants  her  romance  cheap !  "  said  Mrs.  Dyott. 

"  Oh,  no — I  should  be  willing  to  pay  for  it.  I  don't 
see  why  the  romance — since  you  give  it  that  name — 
should  be  all,  as  the  French  inveterately  make  it,  for 
the  women  who  are  bad." 

"  Oh,  they  pay  for  it !  "  said  Mrs.  Dyott. 

"Do  they?" 

"  So,  at  least  " — Mrs.  Dyott  a  little  corrected  herself 
— "one  has  gathered  (for  I  don't  read  your  books, 
you  know!)  that  they're  usually  shown  as  doing." 

Maud  wondered,  but  looking  at  Voyt.  "  They're 
shown  often,  no  doubt,  as  paying  for  their  badness. 
But  are  they  shown  as  paying  for  their  romance  ?  " 

"  My  dear  lady,"  said  Voyt,  "  their  romance  is  their 
badness.  There  isn't  any  other.  It's  a  hard  law,  if 
you  will,  and  a  strange,  but  goodness  has  to  go  with 
out  that  luxury.  Isn't  to  be  good  just  exactly,  all 
round,  to  go  without?"  He  put  it  before  her  kindly 
and  clearly — regretfully  too,  as  if  he  were  sorry  the 
truth  should  be  so  sad.  He  and  she,  his  pleasant  eyes 
seemed  to  say,  would,  had  they  had  the  making  of  it, 
have  made  it  better.  "  One  has  heard  it  before — at 
least  /  have;  one  has  heard  your  question  put.  But 
always,  when  put  to  a  mind  not  merely  muddled,  for 
an  inevitable  answer.  '  Why  don't  you,  cher  monsieur, 
give  us  the  drama  of  virtue  ? '  ( Because,  chere 

180 


THE   STORY    IN   IT 

madame,  the  high  privilege  of  virtue  is  precisely  to 
avoid  drama.'  The  adventures  of  the  honest  lady? 
The  honest  lady  hasn't — can't  possibly  have  advent 
ures." 

Mrs.  Blessingbourne  only  met  his  eyes  at  first,  smil 
ing  with  a  certain  intensity.  "  Doesn't  it  depend  a 
little  on  what  you  call  adventures?  " 

"  My  poor  Maud,"  said  Mrs.  Dyott,  as  if  in  compas 
sion  for  sophistry  so  simple,  "  adventures  are  just  ad 
ventures.  That's  all  you  can  make  of  them !  " 

But  her  friend  went  on,  for  their  companion,  as  if 
without  hearing.  "  Doesn't  it  depend  a  good  deal  on 
what  you  call  drama?  "  Maud  spoke  as  one  who  had 
already  thought  it  out.  "  Doesn't  it  depend  on  what 
you  call  romance?  " 

Her  listener  gave  these  arguments  his  very  best  at 
tention.  "  Of  course  you  may  call  things  anything 
you  like — speak  of  them  as  one  thing  and  mean  quite 
another.  But  why  should  it  depend  on  anything  ?  Be 
hind  these  words  we  use — the  adventure,  the  novel, 
the  drama,  the  romance,  the  situation,  in  short,  as  we 
most  comprehensively  say — behind  them  all  stands  the 
same  sharp  fact  that  they  all,  in  their  different  ways, 
represent." 

"  Precisely !  "    Mrs.  Dyott  was  full  of  approval. 

Maud,  however,  was  full  of  vagueness.  "  What 
great  fact?  " 

"  The  fact  of  a  relation.  The  adventure's  a  relation ; 
the  relation's  an  adventure.  The  romance,  the  novel, 
the  drama  are  the  picture  of  one.  The  subject  the 
novelist  treats  is  the  rise,  the  formation,  the  develop 
ment,  the  climax,  and  for  the  most  part  the  decline,  of 
one.  And  what  is  the  honest  lady  doing  on  that  side 
of  the  town?  " 

Mrs.  Dyott  was  more  pointed.  "  She  doesn't  so 
much  as  form  a  relation." 

But  Maud  bore  up.  "  Doesn't  it  depend,  again,  on 
what  you  call  a  relation  ?  " 

181 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Oh,"  said  Mrs.  Dyott,  "  if  a  gentleman  picks  up 
her  pocket-handkerchief " 

"  Ah,  even  that's  one,"  their  friend  laughed,  "  if 
she  has  thrown  it  to  him.  We  can  only  deal  with  one 
that  is  one." 

"  Surely,"  Maud  replied.  "  But  if  it's  an  innocent 
one ?" 

"  Doesn't  it  depend  a  good  deal,"  Mrs.  Dyott  asked, 
"  on  what  you  call  innocent?  " 

1  You  mean  that  the  adventures  of  innocence  have 
so  often  been  the  material  of  fiction?  Yes,"  Voyt  re 
plied  ;  "  that's  exactly  what  the  bored  reader  complains 
of.  He  has  asked  for  bread  and  been  given  a  stone. 
What  is  it  but,  with  absolute  directness,  a  question  of 
interest,  or,  as  people  say,  of  the  story?  What's  a 
situation  undeveloped  but  a  subject  lost?  If  a  relation 
stops,  where's  the  story  ?  If  it  doesn't  stop,  where's  the 
innocence  ?  It  seems  to  me  you  must  choose.  It  would 
be  very  pretty  if  it  were  otherwise,  but  that's  how  we 
flounder.  Art  is  our  flounderings  shown." 

Mrs.  Blessingbourne — and  with  an  air  of  deference 
scarce  supported  perhaps  by  its  sketchiness — kept  her 
deep  eyes  on  this  definition.  "  But  sometimes  we 
flounder  out." 

It  immediately  touched  in  Colonel  Voyt  the  spring 
of  a  genial  derision.  "  That's  just  where  I  expected 
you  would!  One  always  sees  it  come." 

"  He  has,  you  notice,"  Mrs.  Dyott  parenthesised  to 
Maud,  "  seen  it  come  so  often ;  and  he  has  always 
waited  for  it  and  met  it." 

"  Met  it,  dear  lady,  simply  enough !  It's  the  old 
story,  Mrs.  Blessingbourne.  The  relation  is  innocent 
that  the  heroine  gets  out  of.  The  book  is  innocent 
that's  the  story  of  her  getting  out.  But  what  the  devil 
— in  the  name  of  innocence — was  she  doing  in?  " 

Mrs.  Dyott  promptly  echoed  the  question.  "  You 
have  to  be  in,  you  know,  to  get  out.  So  there  you  are 

182 


THE   STORY    IN    IT 

already  with  your  relation.  It's  the  end  of  your  good 
ness."* 

"  And  the  beginning,"  said  Voyt,  "  of  your  play !  " 

"  Aren't  they  all,  for  that  matter,  even  the  worst," 
Mrs.  Dyott  pursued,  "  supposed  some  time  or  other  to 
get  out?  But  if,  meanwhile,  they've  been  in,  however 
briefly,  long  enough  to  adorn  a  tale " 

"  They've  been  in  long  enough  to  point  a  moral. 
That  is  to  point  ours !  "  With  which,  and  as  if  a  sud 
den  flush  of  warmer  light  had  moved  him,  Colonel  Voyt 
got  up.  The  veil  of  the  storm  had  parted  over  a  great 
red  sunset. 

Mrs.  Dyott  also  was  on  her  feet,  and  they  stood  be 
fore  his  charming  antagonist,  who,  with  eyes  lowered 
and  a  somewhat  fixed  smile,  had  not  moved.  "  We've 
spoiled  her  subject!  "  the  elder  lady  sighed. 

"  Well,"  said  Voyt,  "  it's  better  to  spoil  an  artist's 
subject  than  to  spoil  his  reputation.  I  mean,"  he  ex 
plained  to  Maud  with  his  indulgent  manner,  "  his  ap 
pearance  of  knowing  what  he  has  got  hold  of,  for 
that,  in  the  last  resort,  is  his  happiness." 

She  slowly  rose  at  this,  facing  him  with  an  aspect 
as  handsomely  mild  as  his  own.  "  You  can't  spoil  my 
happiness." 

He  held  her  hand  an  instant  as  he  took  leave.  "  I 
wish  I  could  add  to  it !  " 

III 

WHEN  he  had  quitted  them  and  Mrs.  Dyott  had  can 
didly  asked  if  her  friend  had  found  him  rude  or  crude, 
Maud  replied — though  not  immediately — that  she  had 
feared  showing  only  too  much  that  she  found  him 
charming.  But  if  Mrs.  Dyott  took  this,  it  was  to  weigh 
the  sense.  "  How  could  you  show  it  too  much  ?  " 

"  Because  I  always  feel  that  that's  my  only  way  of 
showing  anything.  It's  absurd,  if  you  like,"  Mrs. 

183 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

Blessingbourne  pursued,  "  but  I  never  know,  in  such 
intense  discussions,  what  strange  impression  I  may 
give." 

Her  companion  looked  amused.      '  Was  it  intense?  " 

"  /  was,"  Maud  frankly  confessed. 

"  Then  it's  a  pity  you  were  so  wrong.  Colonel  Voyt, 
you  know,  is  right."  Mrs.  Blessingbourne  at  this  gave 
one  of  the  slow,  soft,  silent  headshakes  to  which  she 
often  resorted  and  which,  mostly  accompanied  by  the 
light  of  cheer,  had  somehow,  in  spite  of  the  small  ob 
stinacy  that  smiled  in  them,  a  special  grace.  With  this 
grace,  for  a  moment,  her  friend,  looking  her  up  and 
down,  appeared  impressed,  yet  not  too  much  so  to 
take,  the  next  minute,  a  decision.  "  Oh,  my  dear,  I'm 
sorry  to  differ  from  anyone  so  lovely — for  you're  aw 
fully  beautiful  to-night,  and  your  frock's  the  very 
nicest  I've  ever  seen  you  wear.  But  he's  as  right  as 
he  can  be." 

Maud  repeated  her  motion.  "  Not  so  right,  at  all 
events,  as  he  thinks  he  is.  Or  perhaps  I  can  say,"  she 
went  on,  after  an  instant,  "  that  I'm  not  so  wrong.  I 
do  know  a  little  what  I'm  talking  about." 

Mrs.  Dyott  continued  to  study  her.  "  You  are  vexed. 
You  naturally  don't  like  it — such  destruction." 

"Destruction?" 

"  Of  your  illusion." 

"  I  have  no  illusion.  If  I  had,  moreover,  it  wouldn't 
be  destroyed.  I  have,  on  the  whole,  I  think,  my  little 
decency." 

Mrs.  Dyott  stared.  "  Let  us  grant  it  for  argument. 
What  then?" 

"  Well,  I've  also  my  little  drama." 

"An  attachment?" 

"  An  attachment." 

"  That  you  shouldn't  have?  " 

"  That  I  shouldn't  have." 

"  A  passion?  " 

184 


THE   STORY   IN    IT 

"  A  passion." 

"Shared?" 

"  Ah,  thank  goodness,  no !  " 

Mrs.  Dyott  continued  to  gaze.  "  The  object's  un 
aware ?  " 

"  Utterly." 

Mrs.  Dyott  turned  it  over.    "  Are  you  sure  ?  " 

"  Sure." 

"  That's  what  you  call  your  decency  ?  But  isn't  it," 
Mrs.  Dyott  asked,  "  rather  his?  " 

"  Dear,  no.     It's  only  his  good  fortune." 

Mrs.  Dyott  laughed.  "  But  yours,  darling — your 
good  fortune:  where  does  that  come  in?  " 

:<  Why,  in  my  sense  of  the  romance  of  it." 

:<  The  romance  of  what?    Of  his  not  knowing?  " 

"  Of  my  not  wanting  him  to.  If  I  did  " — Maud  had 
touchingly  worked  it  out — "  where  would  be  my  hon 
esty?" 

The  inquiry,  for  an  instant,  held  her  friend;  yet 
only,  it  seemed,  for  a  stupefaction  that  was  almost 
amusement.  "  Can  you  want  or  not  want  as  you  like? 
Where  in  the  world,  if  you  don't  want,  is  your  ro 
mance  ?  " 

Mrs.  Blessingbourne  still  wore  her  smile,  and  she 
now,  with  a  light  gesture  that  matched  it,  just  touched 
the  region  of  her  heart.  "  There !  " 

Her  companion  admiringly  marvelled.  "  A  lovely 
place  for  it,  no  doubt ! — but  not  quite  a  place,  that  I  can 
see,  to  make  the  sentiment  a  relation." 

"  Why  not  ?  What  more  is  required  for  a  relation 
for  me?  " 

"  Oh,  all  sorts  of  things,  I  should  say !  And  many 
more,  added  to  those,  to  make  it  one  for  the  person  you 
mention." 

"  Ah,  that  I  don't  pretend  it  either  should  be  or  can 
be.  I  only  speak  for  myself." 

It  was  said  in  a  manner  that  made  Mrs.  Dyott,  with 

185 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

a  visible  mixture  of  impressions,  suddenly  turn  away. 
She  indulged  in  a  vague  movement  or  two,  as  if  to 
look  for  something;  then  again  found  herself  near  her 
friend,  on  whom  with  the  same  abruptness,  in  fact  with 
a  strange  sharpness,  she  conferred  a  kiss  that  might 
have  represented  either  her  tribute  to  exalted  consist 
ency  or  her  idea  of  a  graceful  close  of  the  discussion. 
"  You  deserve  that  one  should  speak  for  you !  " 

Her  companion  looked  cheerful  and  secure.  "  How 
can  you,  without  knowing ?  " 

"  Oh,  by  guessing!    It's  not ?  " 

But  that  was  as  far  as  Mrs.  Dyott  could  get.  "  It's 
not,"  said  Maud,  "  anyone  you've  ever  seen." 

"  Ah  then,  I  give  you  up !  " 

And  Mrs.  Dyott  conformed,  for  the  rest  of  Maud's 
stay,  to  the  spirit  of  this  speech.  It  was  made  on  a 
Saturday  night,  and  Mrs.  Blessingbourne  remained  till 
the  Wednesday  following,  an  interval  during  which,  as 
the  return  of  fine  weather  was  confirmed  by  the  Sunday, 
the  two  ladies  found  a  wider  range  of  action.  There 
were  drives  to  be  taken,  calls  made,  objects  of  interest 
seen,  at  a  distance;  with  the  effect  of  much  easy  talk 
and  still  more  easy  silence.  There  had  been  a  question 
of  Colonel  Voyt's  probable  return  on  the  Sunday,  but 
the  whole  time  passed  without  a  sign  from  him,  and  it 
was  merely  mentioned  by  Mrs.  Dyott,  in  explanation, 
that  he  must  have  been  suddenly  called,  as  he  was  so 
liable  to  be,  to  town.  That  this  in  fact  was  what  had 
happened  he  made  clear  to  her  on  Thursday  afternoon, 
when,  walking  over  again  late,  he  found  her  alone. 
The  consequence  of  his  Sunday  letters  had  been  his 
taking,  that  day,  the  4.15.  Mrs.  Voyt  had  gone  back 
on  Thursday,  and  he  now,  to  settle  on  the  spot  the 
question  of  a  piece  of  work  begun  at  his  place,  had 
rushed  dowrn  for  a  few  hours  in  anticipation  of  the 
usual  collective  move  for  the  week's  end.  He  was 
to  go  up  again  by  the  late  train,  and  had  to  count  a 

186 


THE   STORY    IN   IT 

little — a  fact  accepted  by  his  hostess  with  the  hard 
pliancy  of  practice — his  present  happy  moments.  Too 
few  as  these  were,  however,  he  found  time  to  make 
of  her  an  inquiry  or  two  not  directly  bearing  on  their 
situation.  The  first  was  a  recall  of  the  question  for 
which  Mrs.  Blessingbourne's  entrance  on  the  previous 
Saturday  had  arrested  her  answer.  Did  that  lady 
know  of  anything  between  them  ? 

"  No.  I'm  sure.  There's  one  thing  she  does  know," 
Mrs.  Dyott  went  on ;  "  but  it's  quite  different  and  not 
so  very  wonderful." 

"What,  then,  is  it?" 

"  Well,  that  she's  herself  in  love." 

Voyt  showed  his  interest.  "  You  mean  she  told 
you?" 

"  I  got  it  out  of  her." 

He  showed  his  amusement.  "  Poor  thing !  And 
with  whom?  " 

"  With  you." 

His  surprise,  if  the  distinction  might  be  made,  was 
less  than  his  wonder.  *  You  got  that  out  of  her  too?  " 

"  No — it  remains  in.  Which  is  much  the  best  way 
for  it.  For  you  to  know  it  would  be  to  end  it." 

He  looked  rather  cheerfully  at  sea.  "  Is  that  then 
why  you  tell  me?  " 

"  I  mean  for  her  to  know  you  know  it.  Therefore 
it's  in  your  interest  not  to  let  her." 

"  I  see,"  Voyt  after  a  moment  returned.  "  Your 
real  calculation  is  that  my  interest  will  be  sacrificed  to 
my  vanity — so  that,  if  your  other  idea  is  just,  the  flame 
will  in  fact,  and  thanks  to  her  morbid  conscience,  ex 
pire  by  her  taking  fright  at  seeing  me  so  pleased.  But 
I  promise  you,"  he  declared,  "  that  she  sha'n't  see  it. 
So  there  you  are !  "  She  kept  her  eyes  on  him  and  had 
evidently  to  admit,  after  a  little,  that  there  she  was. 
Distinct  as  he  had  made  the  case,  however,  he  was  not 
yet  quite  satisfied.  "  Why  are  you  so  sure  that  I'm  the 
man?" 

187 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

"  From  the  way  she  denies  you." 

"You  put  it  to  her?" 

"  Straight.  If  you  hadn't  been  she  would,  of  course, 
have  confessed  to  you — to  keep  me  in  the  dark  about 
the  real  one." 

Poor  Voyt  laughed  out  again.  "  Oh,  you  dear 
souls!" 

"  Besides,"  his  companion  pursued,  "  I  was  not  in 
want  of  that  evidence." 

"  Then  what  other  had  you?  " 

"  Her  state  before  you  came — which  was  what  made 
me  ask  you  how  much  you  had  seen  her.  And  her 
state  after  it,"  Mrs.  Dyott  added.  "  And  her  state," 
she  wound  up,  "  while  you  were  here." 

"  But  her  state  while  I  was  here  was  charming." 

"  Charming.    That's  just  what  I  say." 

She  said  it  in  a  tone  that  placed  the  matter  in  its 
right  light — a  light  in  which  they  appeared  kindly, 
quite  tenderly,  to  watch  Maud  wander  away  into  space 
with  her  lovely  head  bent  under  a  theory  rather  too 
big  for  it.  Voyt's  last  word,  however,  was  that  there 
was  just  enough  in  it — in  the  theory — for  them  to  allo\v 
that  she  had  not  shown  herself,  on  the  occasion  of  their 
talk,  wholly  bereft  of  sense.  Her  consciousness,  if  they 
let  it  alone — as  they  of  course  after  this,  mercifully 
must — was,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  kind  of  shy  romance. 
Not  a  romance  like  their  own,  a  thing  to  make  the 
fortune  of  any  author  up  to  the  mark — one  who  should 
have  the  invention  or  wrho  could  have  the  courage ;  but 
a  small,  scared,  starved,  subjective  satisfaction  that 
would  do  her  no  harm  and  nobody  else  any  good.  Who 
but  a  duffer — he  stuck  to  his  contention — would  see 
the  shadow  of  a  "  story  "  in  it? 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 


WHAT  determined  the  speech  that  startled  him 
in  the  course  of  their  encounter  scarcely  mat 
ters,  being  probably  but  some  words  spoken  by  himself 
quite  without  intention — spoken  as  they  lingered  and 
slowly  moved  together  after  their  renewal  of  acquaint 
ance.  He  had  been  conveyed  by  friends,  an  hour  or 
two  before,  to  the  house  at  which  she  was  staying ;  the 
party  of  visitors  at  the  other  house,  of  whom  he  was 
one,  and  thanks  to  whom  it  was  his  theory,  as  always,, 
that  he  was  lost  in  the  crowd,  had  been  invited  over  to 
luncheon.  There  had  been  after  luncheon  much  dis 
persal,  all  in  the  interest  of  the  original  motive,  a  view 
of  Weatherend  itself  and  the  fine  things,  intrinsic  feat 
ures,  pictures,  heirlooms,  treasures  of  all  the  arts,  that 
made  the  place  almost  famous;  and  the  great  rooms 
were  so  numerous  that  guests  could  wander  at  their 
will,  hang  back  from  the  principal  group,  and,  in 
cases  where  they  took  such  matters  with  the  last  seri 
ousness,  give  themselves  up  to  mysterious  apprecia 
tions  and  measurements.  There  were  persons  to  be 
observed,  singly  or  in  couples,  bending  toward  objects 
in  out-of-the-way  corners  with  their  hands  on  their 
knees  and  their  heads  nodding  quite  as  with  the  empha 
sis  of  an  excited  sense  of  smell.  When  they  were  two 
they  either  mingled  their  sounds  of  ecstasy  or  melted 
into  silences  of  even  deeper  import,  so  that  there  were 
aspects  of  the  occasion  that  gave  it  for  Marcher  much 

189 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

the  air  of  the  "  look  round,"  previous  to  a  sale  highly 
advertised,  that  excites  or  quenches,  as  may  be,  the 
dream  of  acquisition.  The  dream  of  acquisition  at 
Weatherend  would  have  had  to  be  wild  indeed,  and 
John  Marcher  found  himself,  among  such  suggestions, 
disconcerted  almost  equally  by  the  presence  of  those 
who  knew  too  much  and  by  that  of  those  who  knew 
nothing.  The  great  rooms  caused  so  much  poetry  and 
history  to  press  upon  him  that  he  needed  to  wander 
apart  to  feel  in  a  proper  relation  with  them,  though 
his  doing  so  was  not,  as  happened,  like  the  gloating 
of  some  of  his  companions,  to  be  compared  to  the  move 
ments  of  a  dog  sniffing  a  cupboard.  It  had  an  issue 
promptly  enough  in  a  direction  that  was  not  to  have 
been  calculated. 

It  led,  in  short,  in  the  course  of  the  October  after 
noon,  to  his  closer  meeting  with  May  Bartram,  whose 
face,  a  reminder,  yet  not  quite  a  remembrance,  as  they 
sat,  much  separated,  at  a  very  long  table,  had  begun 
merely  by  troubling  him  rather  pleasantly.  It  affected 
him  as  the  sequel  of  something  of  which  he  had  lost 
the  beginning.  He  knew  it,  and  for  the  time  quite 
welcomed  it,  as  a  continuation,  but  didn't  know  what 
it  continued,  which  was  an  interest,  or  an  amusement, 
the  greater  as  he  was  also  somehow  aware — yet  with 
out  a  direct  sign  from  her — that  the  young  woman  her 
self  had  not  lost  the  thread.  She  had  not  lost  it,  but 
she  wouldn't  give  it  back  to  him,  he  saw,  without  some 
putting  forth  of  his  hand  for  it;  and  he  not  only  saw 
that,  but  saw  several  things  more,  things  odd  enough 
in  the  light  of  the  fact  that  at  the  moment  some  acci 
dent  of  grouping  brought  them  face  to  face  he  was 
still  merely  fumbling  with  the  idea  that  any  contact 
between  them  in  the  past  would  have  had  no  impor 
tance.  If  it  had  had  no  importance  he  scarcely  knew 
why  his  actual  impression  of  her  should  so  seem  to 
have  so  much ;  the  answer  to  which,  however,  was  that 

190 


THE   BEAST    IN   THE   JUNGLE 


in  such  a  life  as  theyall  appeared^tgj^e  leaflinp^Foj__thg 
ff\^^^^n^r^r^^T''^\<:p  tTMngsas  thev__came.  He 
was  satisfied,  without  "nTIhe"  least  bemg^Lbie^to  say 
why,  that  this  young  lady  might  roughly  have  ranked 
in  the  house  as  a  poor  relation ;  satisfied  also  that  she 
was  not  there  on  a  brief  visit,  but  was  more  or  less  a 
part  of  the  establishment — almost  a  working,  a  remun 
erated  part.  Didn't  she  enjoy  at  periods  a  protection 
that  she  paid  for  by  helping,  among  other  services,  to 
show  the  place  and  explain  it,  deal  with  the  tiresome 
people,  answer  questions  about  the  dates  of  the  build 
ings,  the  styles  of  the  furniture,  the  authorship  of  the 
pictures,  the  favourite  haunts  of  the  ghost?  It  wasn't 
that  she  looked  as  if  you  could  have  given  her  shillings 
— it  was  impossible  to  look  less  so.  Yet  when  she  finally 
drifted  toward  him,  distinctly  handsome,  though  ever 
so  much  older — older  than  when  he  had  seen  her  be 
fore —  it  might  have  been  as  an  effect  of  her  guessing 
that  he  had,  within  the  couple  of  hours,  devoted  more 
imagination  to  her  than  to  all  the  others  put  together, 
and  had  thereby  penetrated  to  a  kind  of  truth  that  the 
others  were  too  stupid  for.  She  was  there  on  harder 
terms  than  anyone ;  she  was  there  as  a  consequence  of 
things  suffered,  in  one  way  and  another,  in  the  inter 
val  of  years;  and  she  remembered  him  very  much  as 
she  was  remembered — only  a  good  deal  better. 

By  the  time  they  at  last  thus  came  to  speech  they  were 
alone  in  one  of  the  rooms — remarkable  for  a  fine  por 
trait  over  the  chimney-place — out  of  which  their  friends 
had  passed,  and  the  charm  of  it  was  that  even  before 
they  had  spoken  they  had  practically  arranged  with 
each  other  to  stay  behind  for  talk.  The  charm,  happily, 
was  in  other  things  too;  it  was  partly  in  there  being 
scarce  a  spot  at  Weatherend  without  something  to  stay 
behind  for.  It  was  in  the  way  the  autumn  day  looked 
into  the  high  windows  as  it  waned ;  in  the  way  the  red 
light,  breaking  at  the  close  from  under  a  low,  sombre 

191 


I 

THE   BETTER   SORT 

sky,  reached  out  in  a  long  shaft  and  played  over  old 
wainscots,  old  tapestry,  old  gold,  old  colour.  It  was 
most  of  all  perhaps  in  the  way  she  came  to  him  as  if, 
since  she  had  been  turned  on  to  deal  with  the  simpler 
sort,  he  might,  should  he  choose  to  keep  the  whole 
thing  down,  just  take  her  mild  attention  for  a  part  of 
her  general  business.  As  soon  as  he  heard  her  voice, 
however,  the  gap  was  filled  up  and  the  missing  link 
supplied;  the  slight  irony  he  divined  in  her  attitude 
lost  its  advantage.  He  almost  jumped  at  it  to  get 
there  before  her.  "  I  met  you  years  and  years  ago  in 
Rome.  I  remember  all  about  it."  She  confessed  to 
disappointment — she  had  been  so  sure  he  didn't;  and 
to  prove  how  well  he  did  he  began  to  pour  forth  the 
particular  recollections  that  popped  up  as  he  called 
for  them.  Her  face  and  her  voice,  all  at  his  service 
now,  worked  the  miracle — the  impression  operating 
like  the  torch  of  a  lamplighter  who  touches  into  flame, 
one  by  one,  a  long  row  of  gas  jets.  Marcher  flattered 
himself  that  the  illumination  was  brilliant,  yet  he  was 
really  still  more  pleased  on  her  showing  him,  with 
amusement,  that  in  his  haste  to  make  everything  right 
he  had  got  most  things  rather  wrong.  It  hadn't  been 
at  Rome — it  had  been  at  Naples;  and  it  hadn't  been 
seven  years  before — it  had  been  more  nearly  ten.  She 
hadn't  been  either  with  her  uncle  and  aunt,  but  with 
her  mother  and  her  brother;  in  addition  to  which  it 
was  not  with  the  Pembles  that  he  had  been,  but  with 
the  Boyers,  coming  down  in  their  company  from  Rome 
— a  point  on  which  she  insisted,  a  little  to  his  confusion, 
and  as  to  which  she  had  her  evidence  in  hand.  The 
Boyers  she  had  known,  but  she  didn't  know  the  Pem 
bles,  though  she  had  heard  of  them,  and  it  was  the 
people  he  was  with  who  had  made  them  acquainted. 
The  incident  of  the  thunderstorm  that  had  raged  round 
them  with  such  violence  as  to  drive  them  for  refuge 
into  an  excavation — this  incident  had  not  occurred  at 

192 


THE   BEAST    IN   THE  JUNGLE 

the  Palace  of  the  Caesars,  but  at  Pompeii,  on  an  occa 
sion  when  they  had  been  present  there  at  an  important 
find. 

He  accepted  her  amendments,  he  enjoyed  her  cor 
rections,  though  the  moral  of  them  was,  she  pointed 
out,  that  he  really  didn't  remember  the  least  thing 
aboutTier ;  and  he^only  felt  it  as  a  drawback  that  when 
all  was  made  conformable  to  the  truth  there  didn't 
appear  much  of  anything  left.  They  lingered  together 
still,  she  neglecting  her  office — for  from  the  moment 
he  was  so  clever  she  had  no  proper  right  to  him — 
and  both  neglecting  the  house,  just  waiting  as  to  see 
if  a  memory  or  two  more  wouldn't  again  breathe  upon 
them.  It  had  not  taken  them  many  minutes,  after  all, 
to  put  down  on  the  table,  like  the  cards  of  a  pack,  those 
that  constituted  their  respective  hands;  only  what 
came  out  was  that  the  pack  was  unfortunately  not 
perfect — that  the  past,  invoked,  invited,  encouraged, 
could  give  them,  naturally,  no  more  than  it  had.  It 
had  made  them  meet — her  at  twenty,  him  at  twenty- 
five;  but  nothing  was  so  strange,  they  seemed  to  say 
to  each  other,  as  that,  while  so  occupied,  it  hadn't  done 
a  little  more  for  them.  They  looked  at  each  other  as 
with  the  feeling  of  an  occasion  missed ;  the  present  one 
would  have  been  so  much  better  if  the  other,  in  the  far 
distance,  in  the  foreign  land,  hadn't  been  so  stupidly 
meagre.  There  weren't,  apparently,  all  counted,  more 
than  a  dozen  little  old  things  that  had  succeeded  in 
coming  to  pass  between  them ;  trivialities  of  youth,  sim 
plicities  of  freshness,  stupidities  of  ignorance,  small 
possible  germs,  but  too  deeply  buried — too  deeply 
(didn't  it  seem?)  to  sprout  after  so  many  years. 
Marcher  said  to  himself  that  he  ought  to  have  rendered 
her  some  service — saved  her  from  a  capsized  boat  in 
the  Bay,  or  at  least  recovered  her  dressing-bag,  filched 
from  her  cab,  in  the  streets  of  Naples,  by  a  lazzarone 
with  a  stiletto.  Or  it  would  have  been  nice  if  he  could 

T93 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

have  been  taken  with  fever,  alone,  at  his  hotel,  and  she 
could  have  come  to  look  after  him,  to  write  to  his 
people,  to  drive  him  out  in  convalescence.  Then  they 
would  be  in  possession  of  the  sorp^thin^  ftr  other  that- 
their  actual  show  seemed  to  lack^  It  yet  somehow 
presented  itself,  this  show,  as  too  good  to  be  spoiled; 
so  that  they  were  reduced  for  a  few  minutes  more  to 
wondering  a  little  helplessly  why — since  they  seemed 
to  know  a  certain  number  of  the  same  people — their 
reunion  had  been  so  long  averted.  They  didn't  use 
that  name  for  it,  but  their  delay  from  minute  to  min 
ute  to  join  the  others  was  a  kind  of  confession  that 
they  didn't  quite  want  it  to  be  a  failure.  Their  at 
tempted  supposition  of  reasons  for  their  not  having 
met  but  showed  how  little  they  knew  of  each  other. 
There  came  in  fact  a  moment  when  Marcher  felt  a 
positive  pang.  It  was  vain  to  pretend  she  was  an  old 
friend,  for  all  the  communities  were  wanting,  in  spite 
of  which  it  was  as  an  old  friend  that  he  saw  she  would 
have  suited  him.  He  had  new  ones  enough — was  sur 
rounded  with  them,  for  instance,  at  that  hour  at  the 
other  house ;  as  a  new  one  he  probably  wouldn't  have 
so  much  as  noticed  her.  He  would  have  liked  to  invent 
something,  get  her  to  make-believe  with  him  that  some 
passage  of  a  romantic  or  critical  kind  had  originally 
occurred.  He  was  really  almost  reaching  out  in  im 
agination — as  against  time — for  something  that  would 
do,  and  saying  to  himself  that  if  it  didn't  come  this 
new  incident  would  simply  and  rather  awkwardly  close. 
They  would  separate,  and  now  for  no  second  or  for  no 
third  chance.  They  would  have  tried  and  not  suc 
ceeded.  Then  it  was,  just  at  the  turn,  as  he  afterwards 
made  it  out  to  himself,  that,  everything  else  failing, 
she  herself  decided  to  take  up  the  case  and,  as  it  were, 
save  the  situation.  He  felt  as  soon  as  she  spoke  that 
she  had  been  consciously  keeping  back  what  she  said 
and  hoping  to  get  on  without  it ;  a  scruple  in  her  that 

194 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

immensely  touched  him  when,  by  the  end  of  three  or 
four  minutes  more,  he  was  able  to  measure  it.  What 
she  brought  out,  at  any  rate,  quite  cleared  the  air  ancj 
supplied  the  link — the  link  it  was  such  a  mystery  he 
should  frivolously  have  managed  to  lose. 

"  You  know  you  told  me  something  that  I've  never  * 
forgotten  and  that  again  and  again  has  made  me  think 
of  you  since;  it  was  that  tremendously  hot  day  when 
we  went  to  Sorrento,  across  the  bay,  for  the  breeze. 
What  I  allude  to  was  what  you  said  to  me,  on  the  way 
back,  as  we  sat,  under  the  awning  of  the  boat,  enjoy 
ing  the  cool.  Have  you  forgotten  ?  " 

He  had  forgotten,  and  he  was  even  more  surprised 
than  ashamed.  But  the  great  thing  was  that  he  saw  it 
was  no  vulgar  reminder  of  any  "  sweet  "  speech.  The 
vanity  of  women  had  long  memories,  but  she  was  mak 
ing  no  claim  on  him  of  a  compliment  or  a  mistake. 
With  another  woman,  a  totally  different  one,  he  might 
have  feared  the  recall  possibly  even  some  imbecile 
"  offer."  So,  in  having  to  say  that  he  had  indeed  for 
gotten,  he  was  conscious  rather  of  a  loss  than  of  a  • 
gain ;  he  already  saw  an  interest  in  the  matter  of  her 
reference.  "  I  try  to  think — but  I  give  it  up.  Yet  I 
remember  the  Sorrento  day." 

"  I'm  not  very  sure  you  do,"  May  Bartram  after  a 
moment  said ;  "  and  I'm  not  very  sure  I  ought  to  want 
you  to.  It's  dreadful  to  bring  a  person  back,  at  any 
time,  to  what  he  was  ten  years  before.  If  you've  lived 
away  from  it,"  she  smiled,  "  so  much  the  better." 

"  Ah,  if  you  haven't  why  should  I  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  Lived  away,  you  mean,  from  what  I  myself  was  ?  " 

"  From  what  /  was.  I  was  of  course  an  ass,"  March 
er  went  on ;  "  but  I  would  rather  know  from  you  just 
the  sort  of  ass  I  was  than — from  the  moment  you  have 
something  in  your  mind — not  know  anything." 

Still,  however,  she  hesitated.  "  But  if  you've  com 
pletely  ceased  to  be  that  sort ?  " 

195 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Why,  I  can  then  just  so  all  the  more  bear  to  know. 
Besides,  perhaps  I  haven't." 

"Perhaps.  Yet  if  you  haven't,"  she  added,  "I 
should  suppose  you  would  remember.  Not  indeed  that 
/  in  the  least  connect  with  my  impression  the  invidious 
name  you  use.  If  I  had  only  thought  you  foolish,"  she 
explained,  "  the  thing  I  speak  of  wouldn't  so  have  re 
mained  with  me.  It  was  about  yourself."  She  waited, 
as  if  it  might  come  to  him;  but  as,  only  meeting  her 
eyes  in  wonder,  he  gave  no  sign,  she  burnt  her  ships. 
"  Has  it  ever  happened  ?  " 

Then  it  was  that,  while  he  continued  to  stare,  a 
light  broke  for  him  and  the  blood  slowly  came  to  his 
face,  which  began  to  burn  with  recognition.  "  Do 

you  mean   I  told  you ?"     But  he  faltered,   lest 

what  came  to  him  shouldn't  be  right,  lest  he  should 
only  give  himself  away. 

"  It  was  something  about  yourself  that  it  was  nat 
ural  one  shouldn't  forget — that  is  if  one  remembered 
you  at  all.  That's  why  I  ask  you,"  she  smiled,  "  if  the 
thing  you  then  spoke  of  has  ever  come  to  pass  ?  " 

Oh,  then  he  saw,  but  he  was  lost  in  wonder  and 
found  himself  embarrassed.  This,  he  also  saw,  made 
her  sorry  for  him,  as  if  her  allusion  had  been  a  mis 
take.  It  took  him  but  a  moment,  however,  to  feel  that 
it  had  not  been,  much  as  it  had  been  a  surprise.  After 
the  first  little  shock  of  it  her  knowledge  on  the  con 
trary  began,  even  if  rather  strangely,  to  taste  sweet 
to  him.  She  was  the  only  other  person  in  the  world 
then  who  would  have  it,  and  she  had  had  it  all  these 
years,  while  the  fact  of  his  having  so  breathed  his 
secret  had  unaccountably  faded  from  him.  No  won 
der  they  couldn't  have  met  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 
"  I  judge,"  he  finally  said,  "  that  I  know  what  you 
mean.  Only  I  had  strangely  enough  lost  the  con 
sciousness  of  having  taken  you  so  far  into  my  confi 
dence." 

196 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

"  Is  it  because  you've  taken  so  many  others  as  well  ?  " 

"  I've  taken  nobody.    Not  a  creature  since  then." 

"  So  that  I'm  the  only  person  who  knows?  " 

"  The  only  person  in  the  world." 

"  Well,"  she  quickly  replied,  "  I  myself  have  never 
spoken.  I've  never,  never  repeated  of  you  what  you 
told  me."  She  looked  at  him  so  that  he  perfectly  be 
lieved  her.  Their  eyes  met  over  it  in  such  a  way  that 
he  was  without  a  doubt.  "  And  I  never  will." 

She  spoke  with  an  earnestness  that,  as  if  almost  ex 
cessive,  put  him  at  ease  about  her  possible  derision. 
Somehow  the  whole  question  was  a  new  luxury  to 
him — that  is,  from  the  moment  she  was  in  possession. 
If  she  didn't  take  the  ironic  view  she  clearly  took  the 
sympathetic,  and  that  was  what  he  had  had,  in  all  the 
long  time,  from  no  one  whomsoever.  What  he  felt 
was  that  he  couldn't  at  present  have  begun  to  tell  her 
and  yet  could  profit  perhaps  exquisitely  by  the  accident 
of  having  done  so  of  old.  "  Please  don't  then.  We're 
just  right  as  it  is." 

"  Oh,  I  am,"  she  laughed,  "  if  you  are !  "  To  which 
she  added  :  "  Then  you  do  still  feel  in  the  same  way?  " 

It  was  impossible  to  him  not  to  take  to  himself  that 
she  was  really  interested,  and  it  all  kept  coming  as  a 
sort  of  revelation.  He  hacjjjapught  of  himself  so  Ipng 
as  abominably  alone^  and,  lo,  he  wasn  t  alone  a  b1'1"-  He 
hadn't  beenT  it  appeared,  for  an  hour — since  those  mo 
ments  on  the  Sorrento  boat.  It  was  she  who  had  been, 
he  seemed  to  see  as  he  looked  at  her — she  who  had  been 
made  so  by  the  graceless  fact  of  his  lapse  of  fidelity. 
To  tell  her  what  he  had  told  her — what  had  it  been 
but  to  ask  something  of  her?  something  that  she  had 
given,  in  her  charity,  without  his  having,  by  a  remem 
brance,  by  a  return  of  the  spirit,  failing  another  en 
counter,  so  much  as  thanked  her.  What  he  had  asked 
of  her  had  been  simply  at  first  not  to  laugh  at  him. 
She  had  beautifully  not  done  so  for  ten  years,  and  she 

197 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

was  not  doing  so  now.  So  he  had  endless  gratitude 
to  make  up.  Only  for  that  he  must  see  just  how  he 
had  figured  to  her.  "  What,  exactly,  was  the  account 
I  gave ?" 

"  Of  the  way  you  did  feel  ?  Well,  it  was  very  sim 
ple.  You  said  you  had  had  from  your  earliest  time,  as 
the  deepest  thing  within  you,  the  sense  of  being  kept 
for  something  rare  and  strange,  possibly  prodigious 
and  terrible,  that  was  sooner  or  later  to  happen  to  you, 
that  you  had  in  your  bones  the  foreboding  and  the  con 
viction  of,  and  that  would  perhaps  overwhelm  you." 

"  Do  you  call  that  very  simple?"  John  Marcher 
asked. 

She  thought  a  moment.  "  It  was  perhaps  because 
I  seemed,  as  you  spoker  to  nnrlrntnnd  it— 

"  You  do  understand  it  ?  "  he  eagerly  asked. 

Again  she  kept  her  kind  eyes  on  him.  "  You  still 
have  the  belief?" 

"  Oh !  "  he  exclaimed  helplessly.  There  was  too 
much  to  say. 

"  Whatever  it  is  to  be,"  she  clearly  made  out,  "  it 
hasn't  yet  come." 

He  shook  his  head  in  complete  surrender  now.  "  It 
hasn't  yet  come.  Only,  you  know,  it  isn't  anything 
I'm  to  do,  to  achieve  in  the  world,  to  be  distinguished 
or  admired  for.  I'm  not  such  an  ass  as  that.  It  would 
be  much  better,  no  doubt,  if  I  were." 

"  It's  to  be  something  you're  merely  to  suffer?  " 

"  Well,  say  to  wait  for — to  have  to  meet,  to  face, 
to  see  suddenly  break  out  in  my  life ;  possibly  destroy 
ing  all  further  consciousness,  possibly  annihilating  me ; 
possibly,  on  the  other  hand,  only  altering  everything, 
striking  at  the  root  of  all  my  world  and  leaving  me  to 
the  consequences,  however  they  shape  themselves." 

She  took  this  in,  but  the  light  in  her  eyes  continued 
for  him  not  to  be  that  of  mockery.  "  Isn't  what  you 
describe  perhaps  but  the  expectation — or,  at  any  rate, 

198 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

the  sense  of  danger,  familiar  to  so  many  people — of 
*—*  falling  in  love?  " 

John  Marcher  thought.  "  Did  you  ask  me  that  be 
fore?" 

"  No — I  wasn't  so  free-and-easy  then.  But  it's 
what  strikes  me  now." 

"  Of  course,"  he  said  after  a  moment,  "  it  strikes 
you.  Of  course  it  strikes  me.  Of  course  what's  in  store 
for  me  may  be  no  more  than  that.  The  only  thing  is," 
he  went  on,  "  that  I  think  that  if  it  had  been  that,  I 
should  by  this  time  know." 

"  Do  you  mean  because  you've  been  in  love  ?  "  And 
then  as  he  but  looked  at  her  in  silence :  "  You've  been 
in  love,  and  it  hasn't  meant  such  a  cataclysm,  hasn't 
proved  the  great  affair  ?  " 

"  Here  I  am,  you  see.  It  hasn't  been  overwhelm- 
ing." 

'*  Then  it  hasn't  been  love,"  said  May  Bartram. 

"  Well,  I  at  least  thought  it  was.  I  took  it  for  that 
— I've  taken  it  till  now.  It  was  agreeable,  it  was  de 
lightful,  it  was  miserable,"  he  explained.  "  But  it 
wasn't  strange.  It  wasn't  what  my  affair's  to  be." 

"  You  want  something  all  to  yourself — something 
that  nobody  else  knows  or  has  known  ?  " 

"  It  isn't  a  question  of  what  I  '  want ' — God  knows 
I  don't  want  anything.  It's  only  a  question  of  the  ap 
prehension  that  haunts  me — that  I  live  with  day  by 
day." 

He  said  this  so  lucidly  and  consistently  that,  visibly, 
it  further  imposed  itself.  If  she  had  not  been  interested 
before  she  would  have  been  interested  now.  "  Is  it  a 
sense  of  coming  violence?  " 

&.  Evidently  now  too,  again,  he  liked  to  talk  of  it 
"  I  don't  think  of  it  as — when  it  does  come — necessar 
ily  violent.  I  only  think  of  it  as  natural  and  as  of 
course,  above  all,  unmistakable.  I  think  of  it  simply 
as  "the  thing.  The  thing  will  of  itself  appear  natural." 

199 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

r>(  Then  how  will  it  appear  strange?" 

Marcher  bethought  himself.    "  It  won't — to  me." 

"To  whom  then?" 

"  Well,"  he  replied,  smiling  at  last,  "  say  to  you." 

"  Oh  then,  I'm  to  be  present?  " 

l(  Why,  you  are  present — since  you  know." 

"  I  see."  She  turned  it  over.  "  But  I  mean  at  the 
catastrophe." 

At  this,  for  a  minute,  their  lightness  gave  way  to 
their  gravity ;  it  was  as  if  the  long  look  they  exchanged 
held  them  together.  "  It  will  only  depend  on  yourself 
— if  you'll  watch  with  me." 

"  Are  you  afraid?  "  she  asked. 

"  Don't  leave  me  now''  he  went  on. 

"  Are  you  afraid?  "  she  repeated. 

"  Do  you  think  me  simply  out  of  my  mind?  "  he  pur 
sued  instead  of  answering.  "  Do  I  merely  strike  you 
as  a  harmless  lunatic  ?  " 

=-y  "  No,"  said  May  Bartram.     "  I  understand  you.     I 
believe  you." 

*  You  mean  you  feel  how  my  obsession — poor  old 
thing! — may  correspond  to  some  possible  reality?  " 

'  To  some  possible  reality." 

"  Then  you  will  watch  with  me  ?  " 

She  hesitated,  then  for  the  third  time  put  her  ques 
tion.  "  Are  you  afraid  ?  " 

"  Did  I  tell  you  I  was — at  Naples?  " 

"  No,  you  said  nothing  about  it." 

"  Then  I  don't  know.  And  I  should  like  to  know," 
said  John  Marcher.  "  You'll  tell  me  yourself  whether 
you  think  so.  If  you'll  watch  with  me  you'll  see." 

"  Very  good  then."  They  had  been  moving  by  this 
time  across  the  room,  and  at  the  door,  before  passing 
out,  they  paused  as  if  for  the  full  wind-up  of  their  un 
derstanding.  "I'll  watch  with  you,"  said  May  Bar- 
tram. 


THE   BEAST    IN   THE  JUNGLE 


II 

THE  fact  that  she  "  knew  " — knew  and  yet  neither } 
chaffed  him  nor  betrayed  him — had  in  a  short  time< 
begun  to  constitute  between  them  a  sensible  bond^x 
which  became  more  marked  when,  within  the  year  that 
followed  their  afternoon  at  Weatherend,  the  oppor 
tunities  for  meeting  multiplied.  The  event  that  thus 
promoted  these  occasions  was  fh^  c|eath  of  the  ancient 
lady.  Jher_great-aunt.  under  whose  wing,  since  losing 
her  mother,  she  had  to  such  an  extent  found  shelter, 
and  who,  though  but  the  widowed  mother  of  the  new 
successor  to  the  property,  had  succeeded — thanks  to 
a  high  tone  and  a  high  temper — in  not  forfeiting  the 
supreme  position  at  the  great  house.  The  deposition 
of  this  personage  arrived  but  with  her  death,  which, 
followed  by  many  changes,  made  in  particular  a  differ 
ence  for  the  young  woman  in  whom  Marcher's  expert 
attention  had  recognised  from  the  first  a  dependent  with 
a  pride  that  might  ache  though  it  didn't  bristle.  Noth 
ing  for  a  long  time  had  made  him  easier  than  the 
thought  that  the  aching  must  have  been  much  soothed 
by  Miss  Bartram's  now  finding  herself  able  to  set  up 
a  small  home  in  London.  She  had  acquired  property, 
to  an  amount  that  made  that  luxury  just  possible,  under 
her  aunt's  extremely  complicated  will,  and  when  the 
whole  matter  began  to  be  straightened  out,  which  in 
deed  took  time,  she  let  him  know  that  the  happy  issue 
was  at  last  in  view.  He  had  seen  her  again  before  that 
day,  both  because  she  had  more  than  once  accompanied 
the  ancient  lady  to  town  and  because  he  had  paid  an 
other  visit  to  the  friends  who  so  conveniently  made  of 
Weatherend  one  of  the  charms  of  their  own  hospitality. 
These  friends  had  taken  him  back  there;  he  had 
achieved  there  again  with  Miss  Bartram  some  quiet 
detachment;  and  he  had  in  London  succeeded  in  per- 

20 1 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

suading  her  to  more  than  one  brief  absence  from  her 
aunt.  They  went  together,  on  these  latter  occasions, 
to  the  National  Gallery  and  the  South  Kensington 
Museum,  where,  among  vivid  reminders,  they  talked 
of  Italy  at  large — not  now  attempting  to  recover,  as  at 
first,  the  taste  of  their  youth  and  their  ignorance.  That 
recovery,  the  first  day  at  Weatherend,  had  served  its 
purpose  well,  had  given  them  quite  enough;  so  that 
they  were,  to  Marcher's  sense,  no  longer  hovering 
about  the  head-waters  of  their  stream,  but  had  felt 
their  boat  pushed  sharply  off  and  down  the  current. 

They  were  literally  afloat  together;  for  our  gentle 
man  this  ^wasmarked,  quite  as  marked  as  that  the  fort 
unate  cause  oTTTwaS  just  the  buried  treasure_of  heF 
knowledge]  He  had  with  his  own  hands"  dug  upThTs 
little  hoard,  brought  to  light — that  is  to  within  reach  of 
the  dim  day  constituted  by  their  discretions  and  priva 
cies — the  object  of  value  the  hiding-place  of  which  he 
had,  after  putting  it  into  the  ground  himself,  so 
strangely,  so  long  forgotten.  The  exquisite  luck  of 
having  again  just  stumbled  on  the  spot  made  him  in 
different  to  any  other  question;  he  would  doubtless 
have  devoted  more  time  to  the  odd  accident  of  his 
lapse  of  memory  if  he  had  not  been  moved  to  devote 
so  much  to  the  sweetness,  the  comfort,  as  he  felt,  for 
the  future,  that  this  accident  itself  had  helped  to  keep 
fresh.  It  had  never  entered  into  his  plan  that  anyone 
should  "  know,"  and  mainly  for  the  reason  that  it  was 
not  in  him  to  tell  anyone.  That  would  have  been  im 
possible,  since  nothing  but  the  amusement  of  a  cold 
world  would  have  waited  on  it.  Since,  however,  a 
mysterious  fate  had  opened  his  mouth  in  youth,  in  spite 
of  him,  he  would  count  that  a  compensation  and  profit 
by  it  to  the  utmost.  That  the  right  person  should 
know  tempered  the  asperity  of  his  secret  more  even 
than  his  shyness  had  permitted  him  to  imagine;  and 
May  Bartram  was  clearly  right,  because — well,  be- 

202 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

cause  there  she  was.  Her  knowledge  simply  settled  it ; 
he  would  have  been  sure  enough  by  this  time  had  she 
been  wrong.  There  was  that  in  his  situation,  no  doubt, 
that  disposed  him  too  much  to  see  her  as  a  mere  con 
fidant,  taking  all  her  light  for  him  from  the  fact — the 
fact  only — of  her  interest  in  his  predicament,  from  her 
mercy,  sympathy,  seriousness,  her  consent  not  to  regard 
him  as  the  funniest  of  the  funny.  Aware,  in  fine,  that 
her  price  for  him  was  just  in  her  giving  him  this  con 
stant  sense  of  his  being  admirably  spared,  he  was 
careful  to  remember  that  she  had,  after  all,  also  a  life 
of  her  own,  with  things  that  might  happen  to  her, 
things  that  in  friendship  one  should  likewise  take  ac 
count  of.  Something  fairly  remarkable  came  to  pass 
with  him,  for  that  matter,  in  this  connection — some 
thing  represented  by  a  certain  passage  of  his  conscious 
ness,  in  the  suddenest  way,  from  one  extreme  to  the 
other. 

He  had  thought  himself,  so  long  as  nobody  knew, 
the  most  disinterested  person  in  the  world,  carrying 
his  concentrated  burden,  his  perpetual  suspense,  ever  so 
\  quietly,  holding  his  tongue  about  it,  giving  others 
"'no  glimpse  of  it  nor  of  its  effect  upon  his  life,  asking 
of  them  no  allowance  and  only  making  on  his  side  all 
those  that  were  asked.  He  had  disturbed  nobody  with 
the  queerness  of  having  to  know  a  haunted  man, 
though  he  had  had  moments  of  rather  special  tempta 
tion  on  hearing  people  say  that  they  were  "  unsettled." 
If  they  were  as  unsettled  as  he  was — he  who  had  never 
been  settled  for  an  hour  in  his  life— they  would  know 
what  it  meant.  Yet  it  wasn't,  all  trie  same,  for  him  to 
'  make  them,  and  he  listened  to  them  civilly  enough. 
This  was  why  he  had  such  good — though  possibly  such 
father  colourless — manners ;  this  was  why,  .above  all, 
hejruvki  rp.garjhirnsHf,  in  a  greedy_worldt  as  decently 
— as,  in  factTperhaps  even  a  littlel^ihljmely — unselfish. 

that  he  valued  this  character 
203 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

quite  sufficiently  to  measure  his  present  danger  of  let 
ting  it  lapse,  against  which  he  promised  himself  to  be 
much  on  his  guard.  He  was  quite  ready,  none  the  less, 
to  be  selfish  just  a  little,  since,  surely,  no  more  charm 
ing  occasion  for  it  had  come  to  him.  "  Just  a  little," 
in  a  word,  was  just  as  much  as  Miss  Bartram,  taking 
one  day  with  another,  would  let  him.  He  never  would 
be  in  the  least  coercive,  and  he  would  keep  well  before 
him  the  lines  on  which  consideration  for  her — the  very 
highest — ought  to  proceed.  He  would  thoroughly  es 
tablish  the  heads  under  which  her  affairs,  her  require^ 
ments,  her  peculiarities — he  went  so  far  as  to  give  them 
the  latitude  of  that  name — would  come  into  their  inter 
course.  All  this  naturally  was  a  sign  of  how  much  he 
took  the  intercourse  itself  for  granted.  There  was 
nothing  more  to  be  done  about  that.  It  simply  existed ; 
had  sprung  into  being  with  her  first  penetrating  ques 
tion  to  him  in  the  autumn  light  there  at  Weatherend. 
The  real  form  it  should  have  taken  on  the  basis  that 
stood  out  large  was  the  form  of  their  marrying.  But 
the  devil  in  this  was  that  the  very  basis  itself  put  marry 
ing  out  of  the  question.  (His  conviction,  his  apprehen 
sion,  his  obsession,  in  short,  was  not  a  condition  he 
could  invite  a  woman  to  share/  and  that  consequence 
of  it  was  precisely  what  was  the  matter  with  hirnT} 
Something  or  other  lay  in  wait  for  him,  amid  the 
twists  and  the  turns  of  the  months  and  the  years,  like 
a  crouching  beast  in  the  jungle.  It  signified  little 
whether  the  crouching  beast  were  destined  to  slay  him 
or  to  be  slain.  CThe  definite  point  was  the  inevitable 
spring  of  the  creature ;  and  the  definite  lesson  from  that 
was  that  a  man  of  feeling  didn't  cause  himself  to  be  ac 
companied  by  a  lady  on  a  tiger-hunt.  Such  was  the 
image  under  which  he  had  ended  by  figuring  his  lifeTJ 
They  had  at  first,  none  the  less,  in  the  scattered 
hours  spent  together,  made  no  allusion  to  that  view 
of  it;  which  was  a  sign  he  was  handsomely  ready  to 

204 


THE   BEAST    IN    THE   JUNGLE 

give  that  he  didn't  expect,  that  he  in  fact  didn't  care 
always  to  be  talking  about  it.  Such  a  feature  in  one's 
outlook  was  really  like  a  hump  on  one's  back.  The 
difference  it  made  every  minute  of  the  day  existed 
quite  independently  of  discussion.  One  discussed,  of 
course,  like  a  hunchback,  for  there  was  always,  if  noth 
ing  else,  the  hunchback  face.  That  remained,  and  she 
was  watching  him ;  but  people  watched  best,  as  a  gen 
eral  thing,  in  silence,  so  that  such  would  be  predom 
inantly  the  manner  of  their  vigil.  Yet  he  didn't  want, 
at  the  same  time,  to  be  solemn;  solemn  was  what  he 
imagined  he  too  much  tended  to  be  with  other  people. 
The  thing  to  be,  with  the  one  person  who  knew,  was 
easy  and  natural — to  make  the  reference  rather  than 
be  seeming  to  avoid  it,  to  avoid  it  rather  than  be  seem 
ing  to  make  it,  and  to  keep  it,  in  any  case,  familiar, 
facetious  even,  rather  than  pedantic  and  portentous. 
Some  such  consideration  as  the  latter  was  doubtless 
in  his  mind,  for  instance,  when  he  wrote  pleasantly  to 
Miss  Bar  tram  that  perhaps  the  great  thing  he  had  so 
long  felt  as  in  the  lap  of  the  gods  was  no  more  than 
this  circumstance,  which  touched  him  so  nearly,  of  her 
acquiring  a  house  in  London,  it  was  the  first  allusion 
they  had  yet  again  made,  needing  any  other  hitherto 
so  little ;  but  when  she  replied,  after  having  given  him 
the  news,  that  (she  was  by  no  means  satisfied  with  such 
a  Jrifle,  as  thejcljmaxtoso^speciar  a  suspense,jshe_af- 
most  set  him  woricIerTng  it  she  hadnTeven  a  larger  con 
ception  "bt  singularity  tor  him  than  he  had  for  himself. 
He  was  at  all  events  destined  to  become  aware  little  by 
little,  as  time  went  by,  that  she  was  all  the  while  look 
ing  at  his  life,  judging  it,  measuring  it,  in  the  light  of 
the  thing  she  knew,  which  grew  to  be  at  last,  with  the 
consecration  of  the  years,  never  mentioned  between 
them  save  as  "  the  real  truth  "  about  him.  That  had 
always  been  his  owrn  form  of  reference  to  it,  but  she 
adopted  the  form  so  quietly  that,  looking  back  at  the 

205 


THE*  BETTER   SORT 

end  of  a  period,  he  knew  there  was  no  moment  at  which 
it  was  traceable  that  she  had,  as  he  might  say,  got 
inside  his  condition,  or  exchanged  the  attitude  of  beau 
tifully  indulging  for  that  of  still  more  beautifully  be 
lieving  him. 

It  was  always  open  to  him  to  accuse  her  of  seeing 
him  but  as  the  most  harmless  of  maniacs,  and  this,  in 
the  long  run — since  it  covered  so  much  ground — was 
his  easiest  description  of  their  friendship.  He  had  a 
screw  loose  for  her,  but  she  liked  him  in  spite  of  it,  and 
was  practically,  against  the  rest  of  the  world,  his  kind, 
wise  keeper,  unremunerated,  but  fairly  amused  and, 
in  the  absence  of  other  near  ties,  not  disreputably  oc 
cupied.  The  rest  of  the  world  of  course  thought  him 
queer,  but  she,  she  only,  knew  how,  and  above  all  why, 
queer ;  which  was  precisely  what  enabled  her  to  dispose 
the  concealing  veil  in  the  right  folds.  She  took  his 
gaiety  from  him — since  it  had  to  pass  with  them  for 
gaiety — as  she  took  everything  else;  but  she  certainly 
so  far  justified  by  her  unerring  touch  his  finer  sense 
of  the  degree  to  which  he  had  ended  by  convincing  her. 
She  at  least  never  spoke  of  the  secret  of  his  life  ex 
cept  as  "  the  real  truth  abouLyou,"  and  she  hadin  fact 
a  wonderful  way  ot  making  it  seem,  as  such,  the  secret 
of  her  own  life  too.  That  was  in  fine  how  he  so  con 
stantly  felt  her  as  allowing  for  him ;  he  couldn't  on  the 
whole  call  it  anything  else.  He  allowed  for  himself, 
but  she,  exactly,  allowed  still  more;  partly  because, 
better  placed  for  a  sight  of  the  matter,  she  traced  his 
unhappy  perversion  through  portions  of  its  course  into 
which  he  could  scarce  follow  it.  He  knew  how  he  felt, 
but,  besides  knowing  that,  she  knew  how  he  looked 
as  well ;  he  knew  each  of  the  things  of  importance  he 
was  insidiously  kept  from  doing,  but  she  could  add  up 
the  amount  they  made,  understand  how  much,  with 
a  lighter  wreight  on  his  spirit,  he  might  have  done,  and 
thereby  establish  how,  clever  as  he  was,  he  fell  short. 

206 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

Above  all  she  was  in  the  secret  of  the  difference  between 
the  forms  he  went  through — those  of  his  little  office 
under  Government,  those  of  caring  for  his  modest  pat 
rimony,  for  his  library,  for  his  garden  in  the  country, 
for  the  people  in  London  whose  invitations  he  accepted 
and  repaid — and  the  detachment  that  reigned  beneath 
them  and  that  made  of  all  behaviour,  all  that  could 
in  the  least  be  called  behaviour,  a  long  act  of  dissimula 
tion.  What  it  had  come  to  was  that  he  wore  a  mask 
painted  with  the  social  simper,  out  of  the  eye-holes  of 
which  there  looked  eyes  of  an  expression  not  in  the 
least  matching  the  other  features.  This  the  stupid 
world,  even  after  years,  had  never  more  than  half 
discovered.  It  was  only  May  Bartram  who  had,  and 
she  achieved,  by  an  art  indescribable,  the  feat  of  at 
once — or  perhaps  it  was  only  alternately — meeting  the 
eyes  from  in  front  and  mingling  her  own  vision,  as 
from  over  his  shoulder,  with  their  peep  through  the 
apertures. 

A£  So,  while  they  grew  older  together,  she  did  watch 
with  him,  and  so  she  let  this  association  give  shape  and 
colour  to  her  own  existence.  Jjeneathfoy ^  forms  as  well 
detachment  had  learned  to  sit,  and  jbeT^viouTTiacPbe- 
come  for  herT^^e^^aTTenseTa  false  account  of  her 
self.  Theje  was  "But  *one"acC5'ufit'  of  "lief  that  would 
have  been  true  all  the  while,  and  that  she  could  give. 
directly,  to  nobody,  least  of  all_tojohn  Marcher,  Her 
wfiole  attituHe~was  a  "virtual  statement,  but  the  percep 
tion  of  that  only  seemed  destined  to  take  its  place  for 
him  as  one  of  the  many  things  necessarily  crowded  out 
of  his  consciousness.  If  she  had,  moreover,  like  him 
self,  to  make  sacrifices  to  their  real  truth,  it  was  to  be 
granted  that  her  compensation  might  have  affected  her 
as  more  prompt  and  more  natural.  They  had  long 
periods,  in  this  London  time,  during  which,  when  they 
were  together,  a  stranger  might  have  listened  to  them 
without  in  the  least  pricking  up  his  ears ;  on  the  other 

207 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

hand,  the  real  truth  was  equally  liable  at  any  moment 
to  rise  to  the  surface,  and  the  auditor  would  then  have 
wondered  indeed  what  they  were  talking  about.  They 
had  from  an  early  time  made  up  their  mind  that  society 
was,  luckily,  unintelligent,  and  the  margin  that  this 
gave  them  had  fairly  become  one  of  their  common 
places.  Yet  there  were  still  moments  when  the  situa 
tion  turned  almost  fresh — usually  under  the  effect  of 
some  expression  drawn  from  herself.  Her  expressions 
doubtless  repeated  themselves,  but  her  intervals  were 
generous.  "  What  saves  us ,  you  know^J^jthat  we 
answer  so  completely  to  so  usual  an  appearance:  that 
of  the  man  and  woman  whose  friendship  has  become 
such  a  daily  habit,  or  almost,  as  to  be  at  last  indispen 
sable."  That,  for  instance,  was  a  remark  she  had  fre 
quently  enough  had  occasion  to  make,  though  she  had 
given  it  at  different  times  different  developments. 
What  we  are  especially  concerned  with  is  the  turn  it 
happened  to  take  from  her  one  afternoon  when  he  had 
come  to  see  her  in  honour  of  her  birthday.  This  an 
niversary  had  fallen  on  a  Sunday,  at  a  season  of  thick 
fog  and  general  outward  gloom;  but  he  had  brought 
her  his  customary  offering,  having  known  her  now 
long  enough  to  have  established  a  hundred  little  cus 
toms.  It  was  one  of  his  proofs  to  himself,  the  present 
he  made  her  on  her  birthday,  that  he  had  not  sunk  into 
real  selfishness.  It  was  mostly  nothing  more  than  a 
small  trinket,  but  it  was  always  fine  of  its  kind,  and 
he  was  regularly  careful  to  pay  for  it  more  than  he 
thought  he  could  afford.  "  Our  habit  saves  you,  at 
least,  don't  you  see?  because  it  makes  you,  after  all, 
for  the  vulgar,  indistinguishable  from  other  men. 
What's  the  most  inveterate  mark  of  men  in  general? 
Why,  the  capacity  to  spend  endless  time  with  dull 
women — to  spend  it,  I  won't  say  without  being  bored, 
but  without  minding  that  they  are,  without  being 
driven  off  at  a  tangent  by  it ;  which  comes  to  the  same 

208 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

thing.  I'm  your  dull  woman,  a  part  of  the  daily  bread 
for  which  you  pray  at  church.  That  covers  your  tracks 
more  than  anything." 

"  And  what  covers  yours  ?  "  asked  Marcher,  whom 
his  dull  woman  could  mostly  to  this  extent  amuse.  "  I 
see  of  course  what  you  mean  by  your  saving  me,  in 
one  way  and  another,  so  far  as  other  people  are  con 
cerned — I've  seen  it  all  along.  Only,  what  is  it  that 
saves  you?  I  often  think,  you  know,  of  that." 

She  looked  as  if  she  sometimes  thought  of  that  too, 
but  in  rather  a  different  way.  "  Where  other  people, 
you  mean,  are  concerned?  " 

-  "  Well,  you're  really  so  in  with  me,  you  know — as 
a  sort  of  result  of  my  being  so  in  with  yourself.  I 
mean  of  my  having  such  an  immense  regard  for  you, 
being  so  tremendously  grateful  for  all  you've  done  for 
me.  I  sometimes  ask  myself  if  it's  quite  fair.  Fair 
I  mean  to  have  so  involved  and — since  one  may  say 
it — interested  you.  I  almost  feel  as  if  you  hadn't 
really  had  time  to  do  anything  else." 

"  Anything  else  but  be  interested?  "  she  asked.  "  Ah, 
what  else  does  one  ever  want  to  be?  If  I've  been 
'  watching  '  with  you,  as  we  long  ago  agreed  that  I 
was  to  do,  watching  is  always  in  itself  an  absorption." 

"  Oh,  certainly,"  John  Marcher  said,  "  if  you  hadn't 

had  your  curiosity !     Only,  doesn't  it  sometimes 

come  to  you,  as  time  goes  on,  that  your  curiosity  is  not 
being  particularly  repaid  ?  " 

May  Bartram  had  a  pause.  "  Do  you  ask  that,  by 
any  chance,  because  you  feel  at  all  that  yours  isn't  ?  I 
mean  because  you  have  to  wait  so  long." 

Oh,  he  understood  what  she  meant.  "  For  the  thing 
to  happen  that  never  does  happen?  For  the  beast  to 
jump  out?  No,  I'm  just  where  I  was  about  it.  It 
isn't  a  matter  as  to  which  I  can  choose,  I  can  decide 
for  a  change.  It  isn't  one  as  to  which  there  can  be  a 
change.  It's  in  the  lap  of  the  gods.  One's  in  the 

209 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

hands  of  one's  law — there  one  is.  As  to  the  form  the 
law  will  take,  the  way  it  will  operate,  that's  its  own 
affair." 

"  Yes,"  Miss  Bartram  replied ;  "  of  course  one's  fate 
is  coming,  of  course  it  has  come,  in  its  own  form  and 
its  own  way,  all  the  while.  Only,  you  know,  the  form 
and  the  way  in  your  case  w^ere  to  have  been — well, 
something  so  exceptional  and,  as  one  may  say,  so  par 
ticularly  your  own." 

Something  in  this  made  him  look  at  her  with  suspi 
cion.  "  You  say  '  were  to  have  been,'  as  if  in  your 
heart  you  had  begun  to  doubt." 

"  Oh !  "  she  vaguely  protested. 

"  As  if  you  believed,"  he  went  on,  "  that  nothing 
will  now  take  place." 

She  shook  her  head  slowly,  but  rather  inscrutably. 
"  You're  far  from  my  thought." 

He  continued  to  look  at  her.  "  What  then  is  the 
matter  with  you  ?  " 

*"Well,"  she  said  after  another  wait,  "the  matter 
with  me  is  simply  that  I'm  more  sure  than  ever  my 
curiosity,  as  you  call  it,  will  be  but  too  well  re 
paid.  "A 

They  were  frankly  grave  now ;  he  had  got  up  from 
his  seat,  had  turned  once  more  about  the  little  draw 
ing-room  to  which,  year  after  year,  he  brought  his 
inevitable  topic;  in  which  he  had,  as  he  might  have 
said,  tasted  their  intimate  community  with  every  sauce, 
where  every  object  was  as  familiar  to  him  as  the  things 
of  his  own  house  and  the  very  carpets  were  worn  with 
his  fitful  walk  very  much  as  the  desks  in  old  counting- 
houses  are  worn  by  the  elbows  of  generations  of  clerks. 
The  generations  of  his  nervous  moods  had  been  at 
•work  there,  and  the  place  was  the  written  history  of 
jhis  whole  middle  life.  Under  the  impression  of  what 
this  friend  had  just  said  he  knew  himself,  for  some 
Reason,  more  aware  of  these  things,  which  made  him, 

210 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE   JUNGLE 

after  a  moment,  stop  again  before  her.    "  Is  it,  possibly, 
that  you've  grown  afraid  ?  " 

l£  "  Afraid?  "  He  thought,  as  she  repeated  the  word, 
that  his  question  had  made  her,  a  little,  change  colour ; 
so  that,  lest  he  should  have  touched  on  a  truth,  he  ex 
plained  very  kindly.  "  You  remember  that  that  was 
what  you  asked  me  long  ago — that  first  day  at  Weath- 
erend." 

"  Oh  yes,  and  you  told  me  you  didn't  know — that 
I  was  to  see  for  myself.  We've  said  little  about  it 
since,  even  in  so  long  a  time." 

"  Precisely/'    Marcher   interposed — "  quite  as  if  it 

rwere  too  delicate  a  matter  for  us  to  make  free  with. 
Quite  as  if  we  might  find,  on  pressure,  that  I  am  afraid. 
For  then,"  he  said,  "we  shouldn't,  should  we?  quite 
^  know  what  to  do." 

She  had  for  the  time  no  answer  to  this  question. 
''  There  have  been  days  when  I  thought  you  were. 
Only,  of  course,"  she  added,  "  there  have  been  days 
when  we  have  thought  almost  anything." 

"  Everything.  Oh !  "  Marcher  softly  groaned  as 
with  a  gasp,  half  spent,  at  the  face,  more  uncovered 
just  then  than  it  had  been  for  a  long  while,  of  the  im 
agination  always  with  them.  It  had  always  had  its 
incalculable  moments  of  glaring  out,  quite  as  with  the 
very  eyes  of  the  very  Beast,  and,  used  as  he  was  to 
them,  they  could  still  draw  from  him  the  tribute  of 
a  sigh  that  rose  from  the  depths  of  his  being.  All 
that  they  had  thought,  first  and  last,  rolled  over  him; 
the  past  seemed  to  have  been  reduced  to  mere  barren 
speculation.  This  in  fact  was  what  the  place  had  just 
struck  him  as  so  full  of — the  simplification  of  every 
thing  but  the  state  of  suspense.  That  remained  only 
by  seeming  to  hang  in  the  void  surrounding  it.  Even 
his  original  fear,  if  fear  it  had  been,  had  lost  itself  in 
the  desert.  "  I  judge,  however,"  he  continued,  "  that 
you  see  I'm  not  afraid  now." 

211 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  What  I  see  is,  as  I  make  it  out,  that  you've  achieved 
something  almost  unprecedented  in  the  way  of  getting 
used  to  danger.  Living  with  it  so  long  and  so  closely, 
you've  lost  your  sense  of  it;  you  know  it's  there,  but 
you're  indifferent,  and  you  cease  even,  as  of  old,  to 
have  to  whistle  in  the  dark.  Considering  what  the 
danger  is,"  May  Bartram  wound  up,  "  I'm  bound  to 
say  that  I  don't  think  your  attitude  could  well  be  sur 
passed." 

John  Marcher  faintly  smiled.    "  It's  heroic?  " 

"  Certainly— call  it  that." 

He  considered.     "  I  am,  then,  a  man  of  courage?  " 

"  That's  what  you  were  to  show  me." 

He  still,  however,  wondered.  "  But  doesn't  the  man 
of  courage  know  what  he's  afraid  of — or  not  afraid 
of?  I  don't  know  that,  you  see.  I  don't  focus  it.  I 
can't  name  it.  I  only  know  I'm  exposed." 

"  Yes,  but  exposed — how  shall  I  say  ? — so  directly. 
So  intimately.  That's  surely  enough." 

"  Enough  to  make  you  feel,  then — as  what  we  may 
call  the  end  of  our  watch — that  I'm  not  afraid  ?  " 

"  You're  not  afraid.  But  it  isn't,"  she  said,  "  the 
end  of  our  watch.  That  is  it  isn't  the  end  of  yours. 
You've  everything  still  to  see." 

"  Then  why  haven't  you?  "  he  asked.  He  had  had, 
all  along,  to-day,  the  sense  of  her  keeping  something 
back,  and  he  still  had  it.  As  this  was  his  first  impres 
sion  of  that,  it  made  a  kind  of  date.  The  case  was  the 
more  marked  as  she  didn't  at  first  answer;  which  in 
turn  made  him  go  on.  "  You  know  something  I  don't." 
Then  his  voice,  for  that  of  a  man  of  courage,  trembled 
a  little.  "  You  know  what's  to  happen."  Her  silence, 
with  the  face  she  showed,  was  almost  a  confession — 
it  made  him  sure.  "  You  know,  and  you're  afraid  to 
tell  me.  It's  so  bad  that  you're  afraid  I'll  find  out." 

All  this  might  be  true,  for  she  did  look  as  if,  unex 
pectedly  to  her,  he  had  crossed  some  mystic  line  that 

212 


THE   BEAST    IN    THE   JUNGLE 

she  had  secretly  drawn  round  her.  Yet  she  might, 
after  all,  not  have  worried ;  and  the  real  upshot  was 
that  he  himself,  at  all  events,  needn't.  "  You'll  never 
find  out." 

Ill 

IT  was  all  to  have  made,  none  the  less,  as  I  have  said, 
a  date;  as  came  out  in  the  fact  that  again  and  again, 
even  after  long  intervals,  other  things  that  passed  be 
tween  them  wore,  in  relation  to  this  hour,  but  the 
character  of  recalls  and  results.  Its  immediate  effect 
had  been  indeed  rather  to  lighten  insistence — almost 
to  provoke  a  reaction;  as  if  their  topic  had  dropped 
by  its  own  weight  and  as  if  moreover,  for  that  matter, 
Marcher  had  been  visited  by  one  of  his  occasional 
warnings  against  egotism.  He  had  kept  up,  he  felt, 
and  very  decently  on  the  whole,  his  consciousness  of 
the  importance  of  not  being  selfish,  and  it  was  true 
that  he  had  never  sinned  in  that  direction  without 
promptly  enough  trying  to  press  the  scales  the  other 
way.  He  often  repaired  his  fault,  the  season  permit 
ting,  by  inviting  his  friend  to  accompany  him  to  the 
opera;  and  it  not  infrequently  thus  happened  that,  to 
show  he  didn't  wish  her  to  have  but  one  sort  of  food 
for  her  mind,  he  was  the  cause  of  her  appearing  there 
with  him  a  dozen  nights  in  the  month.  It  even  hap 
pened  that,  seeing  her  home  at  such  times,  he  occa 
sionally  went  in  with  her  to  finish,  as  he  called  it,  the 
evening,  and,  the  better  to  make  his  point,  sat  down 
to  the  frugal  but  always  careful  little  supper  that  await 
ed  his  pleasure.  His  point  was  made,  he  thought,  by 
his  not  eternally  insisting  with  her  on  himself;  made 
for  instance,  at  such  hours,  when  it  befell  that,  her 
piano  at  hand  and  each  of  them  familiar  with  it,  they 
went  over  passages  of  the  opera  together.  It 
chanced  to  be  on  one  of  these  occasions,  however,  that 

213 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

he  reminded  her  of  her  not  having  answered  a  certain 
question  he  had  put  to  her  during  the  talk  that  had 
taken  place  between  them  on  her  last  birthday.  "  What 
is  it  that  saves  you?  " — saved  her,  he  meant,  from  that 
appearance  of  variation  from  the  usual  human  type. 
If  he  had  practically  escaped  remark,  as  she  pretended, 
by  doing,  in  the  most  important  particular,  what  most 
men  do — find  the  answer  to  life  in  patching  up  an 
alliance  of  a  sort  with  a  woman  no  better  than  himself 
— how  had  she  escaped  it,  and  how  could  the  alliance, 
such  as  it  was,  since  they  must  suppose  it  had  been 
more  or  less  noticed,  have  failed  to  make  her  rather 
positively  talked  about? 

/.'  I  never  said,"  May  Bartram  replied,  "  that  it  hadn't 
made  me  talked  about." 
jt"  Ah  well  then,  you're  not  '  saved.' ' 

"  It  has  not  been  a  question  for  me._  If  you've  had 
your  woman,  I've  had,"  she  said,  "  my  man."- 

"  And  you  mean  that  makes  you  all  right?  " 

She  hesitated.  "  I  don't  know  why  it  shouldn't 
make  me — humanly,  which  is  what  we're  speaking  of 
— as  right  as  it  makes  you." 

"  I  see,"  Marcher  returned.  "  '  Humanly,'  no  doubt, 
as  showing  that  you're  living  for  something.  Not, 
that  is,  just  for  me  and  my  secret." 

May  Bartram  smiled.  "  I  don't  pretend  it  exactly 
shows  that  I'm  not  living  for  you.  It's  my  intimacy 
with  you  that's  in  question." 

He  laughed  as  he  saw  what  she  meant.  "  Yes,  but 
since,  as  you  say,  I'm  only,  so  far  as  people  make 
out,  ordinary,  you're — aren't  you? — no  more  than  or 
dinary  either.  You  help  me  to  pass  for  a  man  like 
another.  So  if  I  am,  as  I  understand  you,  you're  not 
compromised.  Is  that  it?  " 

She  had  another  hesitation,  but  she  spoke  clearly 
enough.  "  That's  it.  It's  all  that  concerns  me — to 
help  you  to  pass  for  a  man  like  another." 

214 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

He  was  careful  to  acknowledge  the  remark  hand 
somely.  "  How  kind,  how  beautiful,  you  are  to  me! 
How  shall  I  ever  repay  you?  " 

She  had  her  last  grave  pause,  as  if  there  might  be 
a  choice  of  ways.  But  she  chose.  "  By  going  on  as 
you  are." 

It  was  into  this  going  on  as  he  was  that  they  re 
lapsed,  and  really  for  so  long  a  time  that  the  day  in 
evitably  came  for  a  further  sounding  of  their  depths. 
It  was  as  if  these  depths,  constantly  bridged  over  by 
a  structure  that  was  firm  enough  in  spite  of  its 
lightness  and  of  its  occasional  oscillation  in  the  some 
what  vertiginous  air,  invited  on  occasion,  in  the  in 
terest  of  their  nerves,  a  dropping  of  the  plummet  and 
a  measurement  of  the  abyss.  A  difference  had  been 
made  moreover,  once  for  all,  by  the  fact  that  she  had, 
all  the  while,  not  appeared  to  feel  the  need  of  rebutting 
his  charge  of  an  idea  within  her  that  she  didn't  dare 
to  express,  uttered  just  before  one  of  the  fullest  of 
their  later  discussions  ended.  It  had  come  up  for  him 
then  that  she  "  knew  "  something  and  that  what  she 
knew  was  bad — too  bad  to  tell  him.  When  he  had 
spoken  of  it  as  visibly  so  bad  that  she  was  afraid  he 
might  find  it  out,  her  reply  had  left  the  matter  too 
equivocal  to  be  let  alone  and  yet,  for  Marcher's  special 
sensibility,  almost  too  formidable  again  to  touch.  He 
circled  about  it  at  a  distance  that  alternately  narrowed 
and  widened  and  that  yet  was  not  much  affected  by 
the  consciousness  in  him  that  there  was  nothing  she 
could  "  know,"  after  all,  any  better  than  he  did.  She 
had  no  source  of  knowledge  that  he  hadn't  equally 
— gxcept  of  course  that  she  might  have  finernerves. 
That  was  what  Worherfftad  \vlieie"  they  wei ^Interested; 
they  made  out  things,  where  people  were  concerned, 
that  the  people  often  couldn't  have  made  out  for  them 
selves.  Their  nerves,  their  sensibility,  their  imagina 
tion,  were  conductors  and  revealers,  and  the  beauty  of 

215 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

May  Bartram  was  in  particular  that  she  had  given 
herself  so  to  his  case.  He  felt  in  these  days  what,  oddly 
enough,  he  had  never  felt  before,  the  growth  of  a  dread 
of  losing  her  by  some  catastrophe  —  some  catastrophe 
that  yet  wouldn't  at  all  be  the  catastrophe  :  partly  be 
cause  she  had,  almost  of  a  sudden,  begun  to  strike  him 
as  useful  to  him  as  never  yet,  and  partly  by  reason  of 
an  appearance  of  uncertainty  in  her  health,  coincident 
and  equally  new.  It  was  characteristic  of  the  inner 
detachment  he  had  hitherto  so  successfully  cultivated 
and  to  which  our  whole  account  of  him  is  a  reference, 
it  was  characteristic  that  his  complications,  such  as 
they  were,  had  never  yet  seemed  so  as  at  this  crisis  to 
thicken  about  him,  even  to  the  point  of  making  him  ask 
himself  if  he  were,  by  any  chance,  of  a  truth,  within 
sight  or  sound,  within  touch  or  reach,  within  the  im 
mediate  jurisdiction  of  the  thing  that  waited. 

When  the  day  came,  as  come  it  had  to,  that  his 
friend  confessed  to  him  her  fear  of  a  deep  disorder 
in  her  blood,  he  felt  somehow  the  shadow  of  a  change 
and  the  chill  of  a  shock.  He  immediately  began  to 
imagine  aggravations  and  disasters,  and  above  all  to 
think  of  her  peril  as  the  direct  menace  for  himself  of 
personal  privation.  This  indeed  gave  him  one  of  those 
partial  recoveries  of  equanimity  that  were  agreeable 
to  him  —  it  showed  him  that  what  was  still  first  in  his 
mind  was  the  loss  she  herself  might  suffer.  "  What  if 
she  should  have  to  die  before  knowing,  before  see 
ing  -  ?  "  Tj;  wnnlrl  h^ve  been  brutal,  in  the  e.arly 
stages  pf  hpr  trnnhlp,  fr>  put  that  question  + 


it  had  immediately  sn^r^H  for  him  fn  hi*  own 
rprn;  and  {tig  possibility  was  what  most  m?,rJ£  frim 
sorry  fnr  )ipr  If  she  did  "  know,"  moreover,  in  the 
sense  of  her  having  had  some  —  what  should  he  think  ? 
—  mystical,  irresistible  light,  this  would  make  the  mat 
ter  not  better,  but  worse,  inasmuch  as  her  original 
adoption  of  his  own  curiosity  had  quite  become  the 

216 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

basis  of  her  life.  She  had  been  living  to  see  what 
would  be  to  be  seen,  and  it  would  be  cruel  to  her 
to  have  to  give  up  before  the  accomplishment  of  the 
vision.  These  reflections,  as  I  say,  refreshed  his  gen 
erosity;  yet,  make  them  as  he  might,  he  saw  himself, 
with  the  lapse  of  the  period,  more  and  more  discon 
certed.  It  lapsed  for  him  with  a  strange,  steady  sweep, 
and  the  oddest  oddity  was  that  it  gave  him,  independ 
ently  of  the  threat  of  much  inconvenience,  almost  the 
only  positive  surprise  his  career,  if  career  it  could 
be  called,  had  yet  offered  him.  She  kept  the  house  as 
she  had  never  done;  he  had  to  go  to  her  to  see  her 
— she  could  meet  him  nowhere  now,  though  there  was 
scarce  a  corner  of  their  loved  old  London  in  which 
she  had  not  in  the  past,  at  one  time  or  another,  done 
so;  and  he  found  her  always  seated  by  her  fire  in  the 
deep,  old-fashioned  chair  she  was  less  and  less  able 
to  leave.  He  had  been  struck  one  day,  after  an  absence 
exceeding  his  usual  measure,  with  her  suddenly  look 
ing  much  older  to  him  than  he  had  ever  thought  of 
her  being ;  then  he  recognised  that  the  suddenness  was 
all  on  his  side — he  had  just  been  suddenly  struck.  She 
looked  older  because  inevitably,  after  so  many  years, 
she  was  old,  or  almost;  which  was  of  course  true  in 
still  greater  measure  of  her  companion.  If  she  was 
old,  or  almost,  John  Marcher  assuredly  was,  and  yet  it 
was  her  showing  of  the  lesson,  not  his  own,  that 
brought  the  truth  home  to  him.  His  surprises  began 
here ;  when  once  they  had  begun  they  multiplied ;  they 
came  rather  with  a  rush :  it  was  as  if,  in  the  oddest 
way  in  the  world,  they  had  all  been  kept  back,  sown 
in  a  thick  cluster,  for  the  late  afternoon  of  life,  the 
time  at  which,  for  people  in  general,  the  unexpected 
has  died  out. 

/  -  One  of  them  was  that  he  should  have  caught  him 
self — for  he  had  so  done — really  wondering  if  the  great 
accident  would  take  form  now  as  nothing  more  than 

217 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

his  being  condemned  to  see  this  charming  woman,  this 
admirable  friend,  pass  away  from  him.  He  had  never 
so  unreservedly  qualified  her  as  while  confronted  in 
thought  with  such  a  possibility ;  in  spite  of  which  there 
was  small  doubt  for  him  that  as  an  answer  to  his  long 
riddle  the  mere  efTacement  of  even  so  fine  a  feature  of 
his  situation  would  be  an  abject  anticlimax.  It  would 
represent,  as  connected  with  his  past  attitude,  a  drop 
of  dignity  under  the  shadow  of  which  his  existence 
could  only  become  the  most  grotesque  of  failures.  He 
had  been  far  from  holding  it  a  failure — long  as  he  had 
waited  for  the  appearance  that  was  to  make  it  a  suc 
cess.  He  had  waited  for  a  quite  other  thing,  not  for 
such  a  one  as  that.  The  breath  of  his  good  faith  came 
short,  however,  as  he  recognised  how  long  he  had 
waited,  or  how  long,  at  least,  his  companion  had.  That 
she,  at  all  events,  might  be  recorded  as  having  waited 
in  vain — this  affected  him  sharply,  and  all  the  more 
because  of  his  at  first  having  done  little  more  than 
amuse  himself  with  the  idea.  It  grew  more  grave  as 
the  gravity  of  her  condition  grew,  and  the  state  of 
mind  it  produced  in  him,  which  he  ended  by  watching, 
himself,  as  if  it  had  been  some  definite  disfigurement 
of  his  outer  person,  may  pass  for  another  of  his  sur 
prises.  This  conjoined  itself  still  with  another,  the 
really  stupefying  consciousness  of  a  question  that  he 
would  have  allowed  to  shape  itself  had  he  dared.  What 
did  everything  mean — what,  that  is,  did  she  mean,  she 
and  her  vain  waiting  and  her  probable  death  and  the 
soundless  admonition  of  it  all — unless  that,  at  this 
time  of  day,  it  was  simply,  it  was  overwhelmingly  too 
late?  He  had  never,  at  any  stage  of  his  queer  con 
sciousness,  admitted  the  whisper  of  such  a  correction ; 
he  had  never,  till  within  these  last  few  months,  been  so 
false  to  his  conviction  as  not  to  hold  that  what  was  to 
come  to  him  had  time,  whether  he  struck  himself  as 
having  it  or  not.  That  at  last,  at  last,  he  certainly 

218 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

hadn't  it,  to  speak  of,  or  had  it  but  in  the  scantiest  meas 
ure — such,  soon  enough,  as  things  went  with  him,  be 
came  the  inference  with  which  his  old  obsession  had 
to  reckon:  and  this  it  was  not  helped  to  do  by  the 
more  and  more  confirmed  appearance  that  the  great 
vagueness  casting  the  long  shadow  in  which  he  had 
lived  had,  to  attest  itself,  almost  no  margin  left.  Since 
it  was  in  Time  that  he  was  to  have  met  his  fate,  so  it 
was  in  Time  that  his  fate  was  to  have  acted ;  and  as  he 
waked  up  to  the  sense  of  no  longer  being  young,  which 
was  exactly  the  sense  of  being  stale,  just  as  that,  in 
turn,  was  the  sense  of  being  weak,  he  waked  up  to  an 
other  matter  beside.  It  all  hung  together;  they  were 
subject,  he  and  the  great  vagueness,  to  an  equal  and 
indivisible  law.  When  the  possibilities  themselves  had, 
accordingly,  turned  stale,  when  the  secret  of  the  gods 
had  grown  faint,  had  perhaps  even  quite  evaporated, 
that,  and  that  only,  was  failure.  It  wouldn't  have  been 
failure  to  be  bankrupt,  dishonoured,  pilloried,  hanged ; 
it  was  failure  not  to  be  anything.  And  so,  in  the  dark 
valley  into  which  his  path  had  taken  its  unlooked-for 
twist,  he  wondered  not  a  little  as  he  groped.  He  didn't 
care  what  awful  crash  might  overtake  him,  with  what 
ignominy  or  what  monstrosity  he  might  yet  be  asso 
ciated — since  he  wasn't,  after  all,  too  utterly  old  to 
suffer — if  it  would  only  be  decently  proportionate  to 
the  posture  he  had  kept,  all  his  life,  in  the  promised 
presence  of  it.  He  had  but  one  desire  left — that  he 
shouldn't  have  been  "  sold." 

IV 

THEN  it  was  that  one  afternoon,  while  the  spring  of  the 
year  was  young  and  new,  she  met,  all  in  her  own  way, 
his  frankest  betrayal  of  these  alarms.  He  had  gone 
in  late  to  see  her,  but  evening  had  not  settled,  and  she 
was  presented  to  him  in  that  long,  fresh  light  of  wan- 

219 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

ing  April  days  which  affects  us  often  with  a  sadness 
sharper  than  the  greyest  hours  of  autumn.  The  week 
had  been  warm,  the  spring  was  supposed  to  have  begun 
early,  and  May  Bartram  sat,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
year,  without  a  fire,  a  fact  that,  to  Marcher's  sense,  gave 
the  scene  of  which  she  formed  part  a  smooth  and  ul 
timate  look,  an  air  of  knowing,  in  its  immaculate  order 
and  its  cold,  meaningless  cheer,  that  it  would  never 
see  a  fire  again.  Her  own  aspect — he  could  scarce 
have  said  why — intensified  this  note.  Almost  as  white 
as  wax,  with  the  marks  and  signs  in  her  face  as  nu 
merous  and  as  fine  as  if  they  had  been  etched  by  a 
needle,  with  soft  white  draperies  relieved  by  a  faded 
green  scarf,  the  delicate  tone  of  which  had  been  con 
secrated  by  the  years,  she  was  the  picture  of  a  serene, 
exquisite,  but  impenetrable  sphinx,  whose  head,  or  in 
deed  all  whose  person,  might  have  been  powdered  with 
silver.  She  was  a  sphinx,  yet  with  her  white  petals 
and  green  fronds  she  might  have  been  a  lily  too — only 
an  artificial  lily,  wonderfully  imitated  and  constantly 
kept,  without  dust  or  stain,  though  not  exempt  from 
a  slight  droop  and  a  complexity  of  faint  creases,  under 
some  clear  glass  bell.  The  perfection  of  household 
care,  of  high  polish  and  finish,  always  reigned  in  her 
rooms,  but  they  especially  looked  to  Marcher  at  present 
as  if  everything  had  been  wound  up,  tucked  in,  put 
away,  so  that  she  might  sit  with  folded  hands  and  with 
nothing  more  to  do.  She  was  "  out  of  it,"  to  his 
vision;  her  work  was  over;  she  communicated  with 
him  as  across  some  gulf,  or  from  some  island  of  rest 
that  she  had  already  reached,  and  it  made  him  feel 
strangely  abandoned.  Was  it — or,  rather,  wasn't  it — 
that  if  for  so  long  she  had  been  watching  with  him 
the  answer  to  their  question  had  swum  into  her  ken 
and  taken  on  its  name,  so  that  her  occupation  was 
verily  gone?  He  had  as  much  as  charged  her  with 
this  in  saying  to  her,  many  months  before,  that  she 

220 


THE  BEAST  IN   THE  JUNGLE 

even  then  knew  something  she  was  keeping  from  him. 
It  was  a  point  he  had  never  since  ventured  to  press, 
vaguely  fearing,  as  he  did,  that  it  might  become  a  dif 
ference,  perhaps  a  disagreement,  between  them.  He 
had  in  short,  in  this  later  time,  turned  nervous,  which 
was  what,  in  all  the  other  years,  he  had  never  been; 
and  the  oddity  was  that  his  nervousness  should  have 
waited  till  he  had  begun  to  doubt,  should  have  held 
off  so  long  as  he  was  sure.  There  was  something,  it 
seemed  to  him,  that  the  wrong  word  would  bring  down 
on  his  head,  something  that  would  so  at  least  put  an 
end  to  his  suspense.  But  he  wanted  not  to  speak  the 
wrong  word;  that  would  make  everything  ugly.  He 
wanted  the  knowledge  he  lacked  to  drop  on  him,  if 
drop  it  could,  by  its  own  august  weight.  If  she  was 
to  forsake  him  it  was  surely  for  her  to  take  leave. 
This  was  why  he  didn't  ask  her  again,  directly,  what 
she  knew ;  but  it  was  also  why,  approaching  the  matter 
from  another  side,  he  said  to  her  in  the  course  of  his 
visit :  "  What  do  you  regard  as  the  very  worst  that, 
at  this  time  of  day,  can  happen  to  me?  " 

He  had  asked  her  that  in  the  past  often  enough; 
they  had,  with  the  odd,  irregular  rhythm  of  their  inten 
sities  and  avoidances,  exchanged  ideas  about  it  and 
then  had  seen  the  ideas  washed  away  by  cool  intervals, 
washed  like  figures  traced  in  sea-sand.  It  had  ever 
been  the  mark  of  their  talk  that  the  oldest  allusions 
in  it  required  but  a  little  dismissal  and  reaction  to  come 
out  again,  sounding  for  the  hour  as  new.  She  could  thus 
at  present  meet  his  inquiry  quite  freshly  and  patiently. 
"  Oh  yes,  I've  repeatedly  thought,  only  it  always 
seemed  to  me  of  old  that  I  couldn't  quite  make  up  my 
mind.  I  thought  of  dreadful  things,  between  which  it 
was  difficult  to  choose;  and  so  must  you  have  done." 

"  Rather !  I  feel  now  as  if  I  had  scarce  done  any 
thing  else.  I  appear  to  myself  to  have  spent  my  life 
in  thinking  of  nothing  but  dreadful  things.  A  great 

221 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

many  of  them  I've  at  different  times  named  to  you, 
but  there  were  others  I  couldn't  name." 

"  They  were  too,  too  dreadful  ?  " 

"  Too,  too  dreadful — some  of  them." 

She  looked  at  him  a  minute,  and  there  came  to  him 
as  he  met  it  an  inconsequent  sense  that  her  eyes,  when 
one  got  their  full  clearness,  were  still  as  beautiful  as 
they  had  been  in  youth,  only  beautiful  with  a  strange, 
cold  light — a  light  that  somehow  was  a  part  of  the 
effect,  if  it  wasn't  rather  a  part  of  the  cause,  of  the 
pale,  hard  sweetness  of  the  season  and  the  hour.  "  And 
yet,"  she  said  at  last,  "  there  are  horrors  we  have  men 
tioned." 

It  deepened  the  strangeness  to  see  her,  as  such  a 
figure  in  such  a  picture,  talk  of  "  horrors,"  but  she  was 
to  do,  in  a  few  minutes,  something  stranger  yet — 
though  even  of  this  he  was  to  take  the  full  meas 
ure  but  afterwards — and  the  note  of  it  was  already  in 
the  air.  It  was,  for  the  matter  of  that,  one  of  the 
signs  that  her  eyes  were  having  again  such  a  high 
flicker  of  their  prime.  He  had  to  admit,  however,  what 
she  said.  "  Oh  yes,  there  were  times  when  we  did 
go  far."  He  caught  himself  in  the  act,  speaking  as  if  it 
all  were  over.  Well,  he  wished  it  were;  and  the  con 
summation  depended,  for  him,  clearly,  more  and  more 
on  his  companion. 

But  she  had  now  a  soft  smile.    "  Oh,  far !  " 

It  was  oddly  ironic.  "  Do  you  mean  you're  prepared 
to  go  further?  " 

She  was  frail  and  ancient  and  charming  as  she  con 
tinued  to  look  at  him,  yet  it  was  rather  as  if  she  had 
lost  the  thread.  "  Do  you  consider  that  we  went  so 
far?" 

"  Why,  I  thought  it  the  point  you  were  just  making 
— that  we  had  looked  most  things  in  the  face." 

"  Including  each  other?  "  She  still  smiled.  "  But 
you're  quite  right.  We've  had  together  great  imagina- 

222 


THE   BEAST    IN   THE   JUNGLE 

tions,  often  great  fears;  but  some  of  them  have  been 
unspoken." 

"  Then  the  worst — we  haven't  faced  that.     I  could 

face  it,  I  believe,  if  I  knew  what  you  think  it.     I  feel," 

he  explained,  "  as  if  I  had  lost  my  power  to  conceive 

such  things."     And  he  wondered  if  he  looked  as  blank 

,as  he  sounded.    "  It's  spent." 

"  Then  why  do  you  assume,"  she  asked,  "  that  mine 
isn't?" 

"  Because  you've  given  me  signs  to  the  contrary. 
It  isn't  a  question  for  you  of  conceiving,  imagining, 
comparing.  It  isn't  a  question  now  of  choosing."  At 
last  he  came  out  with  it.  "  You  know  something  that 
I  don't.  You've  showed  me  that  before." 

These  last  words  affected  her,  he  could  see  in  a  mo 
ment,  remarkably,  and  she  spoke  with  firmness.  "  I've 
shown  you,  my  dear,  nothing." 

He  shook  his  head.     "  You  can't  hide  it." 

"  Oh,  oh !  "  May  Bartram  murmured  over  what 
she  couldn't  hide.  It  was  almost  a  smothered  groan. 

"  You  admitted  it  months  ago,  when  I  spoke  of  it 
to  you  as  of  something  you  were  afraid  I  would  find 
out.  Your  answer  was  that  I  couldn't,  that  I  wouldn't, 
and  I  don't  pretend  I  have.  But  you  had  something 
therefore  in  mind,  and  I  see  now  that  it  must  have  been, 
that  it  still  is,  the  possibility  that,  of  all  possibilities, 
has  settled  itself  for  you  as  the  worst.  This,"  he  went 
on,  "  is  why  I  appeal  to  you.  I'm  only  afraid  of  ig 
norance  now — I'm  not  afraid  of  knowledge."  And 
then  as  for  a  while  she  said  nothing :  "  What  makes 
me  sure  is  that  I  see  in  your  face  and  feel  here,  in  this 
air  and  amid  these  appearances,  that  you're  out  of  it. 
You've  done.  You've  had  your  experience.  You  leave 
me  to  my  fate." 

Well,  she  listened,  motionless  and  white  in  her  chair, 
as  if  she  had  in  fact  a  decision  to  make,  so  that  her 
whole  manner  was  a  virtual  confession,  though  still 

223 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

with  a  small,  fine,  inner  stiffness,  an  imperfect  sur 
render.  "  It  would  be  the  worst,"  she  finally  let  herself 
say.  "  I  mean  the  thing  that  I've  never  said." 

It  hushed  him  a  moment.  "  More  monstrous  than  all 
the  monstrosities  we've  named?  " 

"More  monstrous.  Isn't  that  what  you  sufficiently 
express,"  she  asked,  "  in  calling  it  the  worst?  " 

Marcher  thought.  "  Assuredly — if  you  mean,  as  I 
do,  something  that  includes  all  the  loss  and  all  the 
shame  that  are  thinkable." 

"  It  would  if  it  should  happen,"  said  May  Bartram. 
;<  What  we're  speaking  of,  remember,  is  only  my  idea." 

"  It's  your  belief,"  Marcher  returned.  "  That's 
enough  for  me.  I  feel  your  beliefs  are  right.  There 
fore  if,  having  this  one,  you  give  me  no  more  light 
on  it,  you  abandon  me." 

"  No,  no!"  she  repeated.  "I'm  with  you — don't 
you  see? — still.''  And  as  if  to  make  it  more  vivid  to 
him  she  rose  from  her  chair — a  movement  she  seldom 
made  in  these  days — and  showed  herself,  all  draped 
and  all  soft,  in  her  fairness  and  slimness.  "  I  haven't 
forsaken  you." 

It  was  really,  in  its  effort  against  weakness,  a  gener 
ous  assurance,  and  had  the  success  of  the  impulse  not, 
happily,  been  great,  it  would  have  touched  him  to  pain 
more  than  to  pleasure.  But  the  cold  charm  in  her  eyes 
had  spread,  as  she  hovered  before  him,  to  all  the  rest 
of  her  person,  so  that  it  was,  for  the  minute,  almost 
like  a  recovery  of  youth.  He  couldn't  pity  her  for  that ; 
he  could  only  take  her  as  she  showed — as  capable  still 
of  helping  him..  It  was  as  if,  at  the  same  time,  her 
light  might  at  any  instant  go  out ;  wherefore  he  must 
make  the  most  of  it.  There  passed  before  him  with  in- 
tensity  the  three  or  four  things  he  wanted  most  to 
know;  but  the  question  that  came  of  itself  to  his  lips 
really  covered  the  others.  "  Then  tell  me  if  I  shall 
consciously  suffer." 

224 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

She  promptly  shook  her  head.     "  Never !  " 

It  confirmed  the  authority  he  imputed  to  her,  and 
it  produced  on  him  an  extraordinary  effect.     "  Well, 
what's  better  than  that?     Do  you  call  that  the  worst?  " 
'  You  think  nothing  is  better?  "  she  asked. 

She  seemed  to  mean  something  so  special  that  he 
again  sharply  wondered,  though  still  with  the  dawn 
of  a  prospect  of  relief.  "  Why  not,  if  one  doesn't 
know?  '  After  which,  as  their  eyes,  over  his  question, 
met  in  a  silence,  the  dawn  deepened  and  something  to  his 
purpose  came,  prodigiously,  out  of  her  very  face.  His 
own,  as  he  took  it  in,  suddenly  flushed  to  the  forehead, 
and  he  gasped  with  the  force  of  a  perception  to  which, 
on  the  instant,  everything  fitted.  The  sound  of  his 
gasp  filled  the  air ;  then  he  became  articulate.  "  I  see 
-if  I  don't  suffer!" 

In  her  own  look,  however,  was  doubt.  "  You  see 
what?" 

"  Why,  what  you  mean — what  you've  always 
meant." 

She  again  shook  her  head.  "  What  I  mean  isn't 
what  I've  always  meant.  It's  different." 

"  It's  something  new  ?  " 

She  hesitated.  "  Something  new.  It's  not  what  you 
think.  I  see  what  you  think." 

His  divination  drew  breath  then;  only  her  correc 
tion  might  be  wrong.  "  It  isn't  that  I  am  a  donkey?  " 
he  asked  between  faintness  and  grimness.  "  It  isn't 
that  it's  all  a  mistake?" 

ELA.  mistake  ?  "  she  pityingly  echoed.  That  possibil 
ity,  for  her,  he  sawT  would  be  monstrous:,  and  if  she* 
guaranteed  him  theimmunity  from  pain  it  would  ac- 
cordingly  not  be  what  she  had  in  mind.  "  Oh,  no,"  she 
declared ;  "  it's  nothing  of  that  sort.  You've  been 
right." 

Yet  he  couldn't  help  asking  himself  if  she  weren't, 
thus  pressed,  speaking  but  to  save  him.  It  seemed  to 

225 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

him  he  should  be  most  lost  if  his  history  should  prove 
all  a  platitude.  "  Are  you  telling  me  the  truth,  so 
that  I  sha'n't  have  been  a  bigger  idiot  than  I  can  bear 
to  know?  I  haven't  lived  with  a  vain  imagination, 
in  the  most  besotted  illusion?  I  haven't  waited  but  to 
see  the  door  shut  in  my  face?  " 

She  shook  her  head  again.  "  However  the  case 
stands  that  isn't  the  truth.  Whatever  the  reality,  it  is 
a  reality.  The  door  isn't  shut.  The  door's  open/'  said 
May  Bartram. 

"Then  something's  to  come?" 

She  waited  once  again,  always  with  her  cold,  sweet 
eyes  on  him.  "  It's  never  too  late."  She  had,  with 
her  gliding  step,  diminished  the  distance  between  them, 
and  she  stood  nearer  to  him,  close  to  him,  a  minute, 
as  if  still  full  of  the  unspoken.  Her  movement  might 
have  been  for  some  finer  emphasis  of  what  she  was 
at  once  hesitating  and  deciding  to  say.  He  had  been 
standing  by  the  chimney-piece,  fireless  and  sparely 
adorned,  a  small,  perfect  old  French  clock  and  two 
morsels  of  rosy  Dresden  constituting  all  its  furniture; 
and  her  hand  grasped  the  shelf  while  she  kept  him 
waiting,  grasped  it  a  little  as  for  support  and  encourage 
ment.  She  only  kept  him  waiting,  however;  that  is 
he  only  waited.  It  had  become  suddenly,  from  her 
movement  and  attitude,  beautiful  and  vivid  to  him 
that  she  had  something  more  to  give  him ;  her  wasted 
face  delicately  shone  with  it,  and  it  glittered,  almost  as 
with  the  white  lustre  of  silver,  in  her  expression.  She 
was  right,  incontestably,  for  what  he  saw  in  her  face 
was  the  truth,  and  strangely,  without  consequence, 
while  their  talk  of  it  as  dreadful  was  still  in  the  air, 
she  appeared  to  present  it  as  inordinately  soft.  This, 
prompting  bewilderment,  made  him  but  gape  the  more 
gratefully  for  her  revelation,  so  that  they  continued 
for  some  minutes  silent,  her  face  shining  at  him,  her 
contact  imponderably  pressing,  and  his  stare  all  kind, 

226 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE   JUNGLE 

but  all  expectant.  The  end,  none  the  less,  was  that 
what  he  had  expected  failed  to  sound.  Something 
else  took  place  instead,  which  seemed  to  consist  at  first 
in  the  mere  closing  of  her  eyes.  She  gave  way  at  the 
same  instant  to  a  slow,  fine  shudder,  and  though  he 
remained  staring — though  he  stared,  in  fact,  but  the 
harder — she  turned  off  and  regained  her  chair.  It  was 
the  end  of  what  she  had  been  intending,  but  it  left  him 
thinking  only  of  that. 

"  Well,  you  don't  say ?  " 

She  had  touched  in  her  passage  a  bell  near  the  chim 
ney  and  had  sunk  back,  strangely  pale,  "  I'm  afraid 
I'm  too  ill." 

"  Too  ill  to  tell  me?  "  It  sprang  up  sharp  to  him, 
and  almost  to  his  lips,  the  fear  that  she  would  die 
without  giving  him  light.  He  checked  himself  in  time 
from  so  expressing  his  question,  but  she  answered  as 
if  she  had  heard  the  words. 

*|  Don't  you  know — nowjj" 

'  Now  -  ^-f"  She  had  spoken  as  if  something 
that  had  made  a  difference  had  come  up  within  the 
moment.  But  her  maid,  quickly  obedient  to  her  bell, 
was  already  with  them.  "  I  know  nothing."  And  he 
was  afterwards  to  say  to  himself  that  he  must  have 
spoken  with  odious  impatience,  such  an  impatience  as 
to  show  that,  supremely  disconcerted,  he  washed  his 
hands  of  the  whole  question. 

"  Oh !  "  said  May  Bartram. 

"  Are  you  in  pain?  "  he  asked,  as  the  woman  went 
to  her. 

"  No,"  said  May  Bartram. 

Her  maid,  who  had  put  an  arm  round  her  as  if  to 
take  her  to  her  room,  fixed  on  him  eyes  that  appeal- 
ingly  contradicted  her ;  in  spite  of  which,  however,  he 
showed  once  more  his  mystification.  "  What  then  has 
happened?  " 

She  was  once  more,  with  her  companion's  help,  on 
227 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

her  feet,  and,  feeling  withdrawal  imposed  on  him,  he 
had  found,  blankly,  his  hat  and  gloves  and  had  reached 
the  door.  Yet  he  waited  for  her  answer.  "  What  was 
to,"  she  said. 


HE  came  back  the  next  day,  but  she  was  then  unable 
to  see  him,  and  as  it  was  literally  the  first  time  this  had 
occurred  in  the  long  stretch  of  their  acquaintance  he 
turned  away,  defeated  and  sore,  almost  angry — or  feel 
ing  at  least  that  such  a  break  in  their  custom  was  really 
the  beginning  of  the  end — and  wandered  alone  with 
his  thoughts,  especially  with  one  of  them  that  he  was 
unable  to  keep  down.  She  was  dying,  and  he  would 
lose  her;  she  was  dying,  and  his  life  would  end.  He 
stopped  in  the  park,  into  which  he  had  passed,  and 
stared  before  him  at  his  recurrent  doubt.  Away  from 
her  the  doubt  pressed  again;  in  her  presence  he  had 
believed  her,  but  as  he  felt  his  forlornness  he  threw 
himself  into  the  explanation  that,  nearest  at  hand,  had 
most  of  a  miserable  warmth  for  him  and  least  of  a  cold 
torment.  She  had  deceived  him  to  save  him — to  put 
him  off  with  something  in  which  he  should  be  able  to 
rest.  What  could  the  thing  that  was  to  happen  to  him 
be,  after  all,  but  just  this  thing  that  had  begun  to 
happen  ?  Her  dying,  her  death,  his  consequent  solitude 
— ihat  was  what  he  had  figured  as  the  beast  in  the 
jungle,  that  was  what  had  been  in  the  lap  of  the  gods. 
HeTiad  had  her  word  for  it  as  he  left  her;  for  what 
else,  on  earth,  could  she  have  meant  ?  It  wasn't  a  thing 
of  a  monstrous  order;  not  a  fate  rare  and  distin 
guished;  not  a  stroke  of  fortune  that  overwhelmed 
and  immortalised ;  it  had  only  the  stamp  of  the  common 
doom.  But  poor  Marcher,  at  this  hour,  judged  the 
common  doom  sufficient.  It  would  serve  his  turn,  and 
even  as  the  consummation  of  infinite  waiting  he  would 

228 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

bend  his  pride  to  accept  it.  He  sat  down  on  a  bench 
in  the  twilight.  He  hadn't  been  a  fool.  Something^ 
had  been,  as  she  had  said,  to  come.  Before  he  rose  in 
deed  it  had  quite  struck  him  that  the  final  fact  really  / 
matched  with  the  long  avenue  through  which  he  had 
had  to  reach  it.  As  sharing-  his  sngp^nftf ,  and  as  giving 
herself  all,  giving  her  life,  to  bring  it  to  an  end,  .she 
had  Come  WJth>im  every  step  nf  flip  A*ray  Hf  hpfl  IJvH 
by  her  ?H,  anH  tn  IP^IVP  li^r  hahinH  wnnlH  hr»  rmpTly, 
•damnably  to  miss  her.  ^Qiat^could  be  more_over- 
\vhplmincr  than  tha±? 

Well,  he  was  to  know  within  the  week,  for  though 
she  kept  him  a  while  at  bay,  left  him  restless  and 
wretched  during  a  series  of  days  on  each  of  which  he 
asked  about  her  only  again  to  have  to  turn  away,  she 
ended  his  trial  by  receiving  him  where  she  had  always 
received  him.  Yet  she  had  been  brought  out  at  some 
hazard  into  the  presence  of  so  many  of  the  things  that 
were,  consciously,  vainly,  half  their  past,  and  there 
was  scant  service  left  in  the  gentleness  of  her  mere 
desire,  all  too  visible,  to  check  his  obsession  and  wind 
up  his  long  trouble.  That  was  clearly  what  she  want 
ed;  the  one  thing  more,  for  her  own  peace,  while  she 
could  still  put  out  her  hand.  He  was  so  affected  by  her 
state  that,  once  seated  by  her  chair,  he  was  moved  to 
let  everything  go;  it  was  she  herself  therefore  who 
brought  him  back,  took  up  again,  before  she  dismissed 
him,  her  last  word  of  the  other  time.  She  showed 
how  she  wished  to  leave  their  affair  in  order.  "  I'm 
not  sure  you  understood.  You've  nothing  to  wait  for 
more.  It  has  come." 

Oh,  how  he  looked  at  her!    "  Really?  " 

"  Really." 

'  The  thing  that,  as  you  said,  zvas  to  ?  " 

"  The  thing  that  we  began  in  our  youth  to  watch 
for." 

Face  to  face  with  her  once  more  he  believed  her; 
229 


THE   BETTER  SORT 

it  was  a  claim  to  which  he  had  so  abjectly  little  to  op 
pose.  "  You  mean  that  it  has  come  as  a  positive,  def 
inite  occurrence,  with  a  name  and  a  date  ?  " 

"  Positive.  Definite.  I  don't  know  about  the 
*  name,'  but,  oh,  with  a  date !  " 

He  found  himself  again  too  helplessly  at  sea.  "  But 
come  in  the  night — come  and  passed  me  by?  " 

May  Bartram  had  her  strange,  faint  smile.  "  Oh 
no,  it  hasn't  passed  you  by !  " 

"  But  if  I  haven't  been  aware  of  it,  and  it  hasn't 
touched  me ?" 

"  Ah,  your  not  being  aware  of  it,"  and  she  seemed 
to  hesitate  an  instant  to  deal  with  this — "  your  not 
being  aware  of  it  is  the  strangeness  in  the  strangeness. 
It's  the  wonder  of  the  wonder."  She  spoke  as  with 
the  softness  almost  of  a  sick  child,  yet  now  at  last, 
at  the  end  of  all,  with  the  perfect  straightness  of  a 
sybil.  She  visibly  knew  that  she  knew,  and  the  effect 
on  him  was  of  something  co-ordinate,  in  its  high  char 
acter,  with  the  law  that  had  ruled  him.  It  was  the 
true  voice  of  the  law;  so  on  her  lips  would  the  law 
itself  have  sounded.  "  It  has  touched  you,"  she  went 
on.  "  It  has  done  its  office.  It  has  made  you  all  its 
own." 

"  So  utterly  without  my  knowing  it?  " 

"  So  utterly  without  your  knowing  it."  His  hand, 
as  he  leaned  to  her,  was  on  the  arm  of  her  chair,  and, 
dimly  smiling  always  now,  she  placed  her  own  on  it. 
"  It's  enough  if  /  know  it." 

"  Oh !  "  he  confusedly  sounded,  as  she  herself  of 
late  so  often  had  done. 

"  What  I  long  ago  said  is  true.  You'll  never  know 
now,  and  I  think  you  ought  to  be  content.  You've 
•had  it,"  said  May  Bartram. 

"But  had  what?" 

"  Why,  what  was  to  have  marked  you  out.  The 
proof  of  your  law.  It  has  acted.  I'm  too  glad,"  she 

230 


THE  BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

then  bravely  added,  "  to  have  been  able  to  see  what  it's 
not" 

He  continued  to  attach  his  eyes  to  her,  and  with  the 
sense  that  it  was  all  beyond  him,  and  that  she  was 
too,  he  would  still  have  sharply  challenged  her,  had 
he  not  felt  it  an  abuse  of  her  weakness  to  do  more 
than  take  devoutly  what  she  gave  him,  take  it  as  hushed 
as  to  a  revelation.  If  he  did  speak,  it  was  out  of  the 
foreknowledge  of  his  loneliness  to  come.  "  If  you're 
glad  of  what  it's  *  not/  it  might  then  have  been 
worse?" 

She  turned  her  eyes  away,  she  looked  straight  before 
her  with  which,  after  a  moment :  "  Well,  you  know 
our  fears." 

He  wondered.  "  It's  something  then  we  never 
feared?" 

On  this,  slowly,  she  turned  to  him.  "  Did  we  ever 
dream,  with  all  our  dreams,  that  we  should  sit  and  talk 
of  it  thus?" 

He  tried  for  a  little  to  make  out  if  they  had;  but 
it  was  as  if  their  dreams,  numberless  enough,  were  in 
solution  in  some  thick,  cold  mist,  in  which  thought  lost 
itself.  "  It  might  have  been  that  we  couldn't  talk?  " 

"  Well  "—she  did  her  best  for  him—"  not  from  this 
side.  This,  you  see,"  she  said,  "  is  the  other  side." 

"  I  think,"  poor  Marcher  returned,  "  that  all  sides 
are  the  same  to  me."  Then,  however,  as  she  softly 
shook  her  head  in  correction :  "  We  mightn't,  as  it 
were,  have  got  across ?  " 

"  To  where  we  are — no.  We're  here  " — she  made 
her  weak  emphasis. 

"  And  much  good  does  it  do  us !  "  was  her  friend's 
frank  comment. 

"  It  does  us  the  good  it  can.  It  does  us  the  good 
that  it  isn't  here.  It's  past.  It's  behind,"  said  May 
Bartram.  "  Before "  but  her  voice  dropped. 

He  had  got  up,  not  to  tire  her,  but  it  was  hard  to 
231 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

combat  his  yearning.     She  after  all  told  him  nothing 
but  that  his  light  had   failed — which  he  knew   well 

enough    without    her.      "Before ?"    he    blankly 

echoed. 

"  Before,  you  see,  it  was  always  to  come.  That  kept 
it  present." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  care  what  comes  now !  Besides," 
Marcher  added,  "  it  seems  to  me  I  liked  it  better  pres 
ent,  as  you  say,  than  I  can  like  it  absent  with  your 
absence." 

"  Oh,  mine !  " — and  her  pale  hands  made  light  of  it. 

"  With  the  absence  of  everything."  He  had  a  dread 
ful  sense  of  standing  there  before  her  for — so  far  as 
anything  but  this  proved,  this  bottomless  drop  was  con 
cerned — the  last  time  of  their  life.  It  rested  on  him 
with  a  weight  he  felt  he  could  scarce  bear,  and  this 
weight  it  apparently  was  that  still  pressed  out  what 
remained  in  him  of  speakable  protest.  "  I  believe  you; 
but  I  can't  begin  to  pretend  I  understand.  Nothing, 
for  me,  is  past;  nothing  will  pass  until  I  pass  myself, 
which  I  pray  my  stars  may  be  as  soon  as  possible. 
Say,  however,"  he  added,  "  that  I've  eaten  my  cake, 
as  you  contend,  to  the  last  crumb — how  can  the  thing 
I've  never  felt  at  all  be  the  thing  I  was  marked  out  to 
feel?" 

She  met  him,  perhaps,  less  directly,  but  she  met  him 
unperturbed.  "  You  take  your  '  feelings  '  for  granted. 
You  were  to  suffer  your  fate.  That  was  not  necessarily 
to  know  it." 

"  How  in  the  world — when  what  is  such  knowledge 
but  suffering  ?  " 

She  looked  up  at  him  a  while,  in  silence.  "  No — 
you  don't  understand." 

I  suffer,"  said  John  Marcher. 

"  Don't,  don't !  " 

"  How  can  I  help  at  least  that?  " 

"  Don't!  "  May  Bartram  repeated. 
232 


THE   BEAST    IN   THE   JUNGLE 

She  spoke  it  in  a  tone  so  special,  in  spite  of  her 
weakness,  that  he  stared  an  instant — stared  as  if 
some  light,  hitherto  hidden,  had  shimmered  across  his 
vision.  Darkness  again  closed  over  it,  but  the  gleam 
had  already  become  for  him  an  idea.  "Because  I 
haven't  the  right ?  " 

"  Don't  know — when  you  needn't/'  she  mercifully 
urged.  "  You  needn't — for  we  shouldn't." 

"Shouldn't?"  If  he  could  but  know  what  she 
meant ! 

"  No — it's  too  much." 

"  Too  much  ?  "  he  still  asked — but  with  a  mystifica 
tion  that  was  the  next  moment,  of  a  sudden,  to  give 
way.  Her  words,  if  they  meant  something,  affected 
him  in  this  light — the  light  also  of  her  wasted  face — 
as  meaning  all,  and  the  sense  of  what  knowledge  had 
been  for  herself  came  over  him  with  a  rush  which  broke 
through  into  a  question.  "Is  it  of  that,  then,  you're 
dying?  " 

She  but  watched  him,  gravely  at  first,  as  if  to  see, 
with  this,  where  he  was,  and  she  might  have  seen  some 
thing,  or  feared  something,  that  moved  her  sympathy. 
"  I_wquld_live  for  you  still—if  I  could."  Her  eyes 
closed  for  a  little,  as  if,  withdrawn  into  herself,  she 
were,  for  a  last  time,  trying.  "  But  I  can't!  "  she  said 
as  she  raised  them  again  to  take  leave  of  him. 

She  couldn't  indeed,  as  but  too  promptly  and  sharply 
appeared,  and  he  had  no  vision  of  her  after  this  that 
was  anything  but  darkness  and  doom.  They  had 
parted  forever  in  that  strange  talk;  access  to  her  cham 
ber  of  pain,  rigidly  guarded,  was  almost  wholly  forbid 
den  him;  he  was  feeling  now  moreover,  in  the  face  of 
doctors,  nurses,  the  two  or  three  relatives  attracted 
doubtless  by  the  presumption  of  what  she  had  to 
"  leave,"  how  few  were  the  rights,  as  they  were  called 
in  such  cases,  that  he  had  to  put  forward,  and  how  odd 
it  might  even  seem  that  their  intimacy  shouldn't  have 

233 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

given  him  more  of  them.  The  stupidest  fourth  cousin 
had  more,  even  though  she  had  been  nothing  in  such 
a  person's  life.  She  had  been  a  feature  of  features 
in  his,  for  what  else  was  it  to  have  been  so  indispensa 
ble?  Strange  beyond  saying  were  the  ways  of  ex 
istence,  baffling  for  him  the  anomaly  of  his  lack,  as  he 
felt  it  to  be,  of  producible  claim.  A  woman  might 
have  been,  as  it  were,  everything  to  him,  and  it  might 
yet  present  him  in  no  connection  that  anyone  ap 
peared  obliged  to  recognise.  If  this  was  the  case  in 
these  closing  weeks  it  was  the  case  more  sharply  on 
the  occasion  of  the  last  offices  rendered,  in  the  great 
grey  London  cemetery,  to  what  had  been  mortal,  to 
what  had  been  precious,  in  his  friend.  The  concourse 
at  her  grave  was  not  numerous,  but  he  saw  himself 
treated  as  scarce  more  nearly  concerned  with  it  than 
if  there  had  been  a  thousand  others.  He  was  in  short 
from  this  moment  face  to  face  with  the  fact  that  he 
was  to  profit  extraordinarily  little  by  the  interest  May 
Bartram  had  taken  in  him.  He  couldn't  quite  have 
said  what  he  expected,  but  he  had  somehow  not  ex 
pected  this  approach  to  a  double  privation.  Not  only 
had  her  interest  failed  him,  but  he  seemed  to  feel  him 
self  unattended — and  for  a  reason  he  couldn't  sound 
— by  the  distinction,  the  dignity,  the  propriety,  if  noth 
ing  else,  of  the  man  markedly  bereaved.  It  was  as  if, 
in  the  view  of  society,  he  had  not  been  markedly  be 
reaved,  as  if  there  still  failed  some  sign  or  proof  of  it, 
and  as  if,  none  the  less,  his  character  could  never  be 
affirmed,  nor  the  deficiency  ever  made  up.  There  were 
moments,  as  the  weeks  went  by,  when  he  would  have 
liked,  by  some  almost  aggressive  act,  to  take  his  stand 
on  the  intimacy  of  his  loss,  in  order  that  it  might  be 
questioned  and  his  retort,  to  the  relief  of  his  spirit, 
so  recorded;  but  the  moments  of  an  irritation  more 
helpless  followed  fast  on  these,  the  moments  during 
which,  turning  things  over  with  a  good  conscience  but 

234 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

with  a  bare  horizon,  he  found  himself  wondering  if  he 
oughtn't  to  have  begun,  so  to  speak,  further  back. 

He  found  himself  wondering  indeed  at  many  things, 
and  this  last  speculation  had  others  to  keep  it  company. 
What  could  he  have  done,  after  all,  in  her  lifetime, 
without  giving  them  both,  as  it  were,  away?  He 
couldn't  have  made  it  known  she  was  watching  him, 
for  that  would  have  published  the  superstition  of  the 
Beast.  This  was  what  closed  his  mouth  now — now 
that  the  Jungle  had  been  threshed  to  vacancy  and  that 
the  Beast  had  stolen  away.  It  sounded  too  foolish 
and  too  flat;  the  difference  for  him  in  this  particular, 
the  extinction  in  his  life  of  the  element  of  suspense,  was 
such  in  fact  as  to  surprise  him.  He  could  scarce  have 
said  what  the  effect  resembled;  the  abrupt  cessation, 
the  positive  prohibition,  of  music  perhaps,  more  than 
anything  else,  in  some  place  all  adjusted  and  all  accus 
tomed  to  sonoriety  and  to  attention.  If  he  could  at 
any  rate  have  conceived  lifting  the  veil  from  his  image 
at  some  moment  of  the  past  (what  had  he  done,  after 
all,  if  not  lift  it  to  her?)  so  to  do  this  to-day,  to  talk 
to  people  at  large  of  the  jungle  cleared  and  confide 
to  them  that  he  now  felt  it  as  safe,  would  have  been  not 
only  to  see  them  listen  as  to  a  goodwife's  tale,  but 
really  to  hear  himself  tell  one.  What  it  presently  came 
to  in  truth  was  that  poor  Marcher  waded  through 
his  beaten  grass,  where  no  life  stirred,  where  no  breath 
sounded,  where  no  evil  eye  seemed  to  gleam  from  a 
possible  lair,  very  much  as  if  vaguely  looking  for  the 
Beast,  and  still  more  as  if  missing  it.  He  walked  about 
in  an  existence  that  had  grown  strangely  more  spacious, 
and,  stopping  fitfully  in  places  where  the  undergrowth 
of  life  struck  him  as  closer,  asked  himself  yearningly, 
wondered  secretly  and  sorely,  if  it  would  have  lurked 
here  or  there.  It  would  have  at  all  events  sprung; 
what  was  at  least  complete  was  his  belief  in  the  truth 
itself  of  the  assurance  given  him.  The  change  from 

235 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

his  old  sense  to  his  new  was  absolute  and  final :  what 
was  to  happen  had  so  absolutely  and  finally  happened 
that  he  was  as  little  able  to  know  a  fear  for  his  future 
as  to  know  a  hope ;  so  absent  in  short  was  any  ques 
tion  of  anything  still  to  come.  He  was  to  live  entirely 
with  the  other  question,  that  of  his  unidentified  past, 
that  of  his  having  to  see  his  fortune  impenetrably  muf 
fled  and  masked. 

The  torment  of  this  vision  became  then  his  occupa 
tion  ;  he  couldn't  perhaps  have  consented  to  live  but  for 
the  possibility  of  guessing.  She  had  told  him,  his 
friend,  not  to  guess ;  she  had  forbidden  him,  so  far  as 
he  might,  to  know,  and  she  had  even  in  a  sort  denied 
the  power  in  him  to  learn :  which  were  so  many  things, 
precisely,  to  deprive  him  of  rest.  It  wasn't  that  he 
wanted,  he  argued  for  fairness,  that  anything  that  had 
happened  to  him  should  happen  over  again;  it  was 
only  that  he  shouldn't,  as  an  anticlimax,  have  been 
taken  sleeping  so  sound  as  not  to  be  able  to  win  back 
by  an  effort  of  thought  the  lost  stuff  of  consciousness. 
He  declared  to  himself  at  moments  that  he  would  either 
win  it  back  or  have  done  with  consciousness  for  ever ; 
he  made  this  idea  his  one  motive,  in  fine,  made  it  so 
much  his  passion  that  none  other,  to  compare  with  it, 
seemed  ever  to  have  touched  him.  The  lost  stuff  of 
consciousness  became  thus  for  him  as  a  strayed  or 
stolen  child  to  an  unappeasable  father;  he  hunted  it 
up  and  down  very  much  as  if  he  were  knocking  at  doors 
and  inquiring  of  the  police.  This  was  the  spirit  in 
which,  inevitably,  he  set  himself  to  travel;  he  started 
on  a  journey  that  was  to  be  as  long  as  he  could  make 
it;  it  danced  before  him  that,  as  the  other  side  of  the 
globe  couldn't  possibly  have  less  to  say  to  him,  it  might, 
by  a  possibility  of  suggestion,  have  more.  Before  he 
quitted  London,  however,  he  made  a  pilgrimage  to 
May  Bartram's  grave,  took  his  way  to  it  through  the 
endless  avenues  of  the  grim  suburban  necropolis, 

236 


THE   BEAST   IN   THE  JUNGLE 

sought  it  out  in  the  wilderness  of  tombs,  and,  though 
he  had  come  but  for  the  renewal  of  the  act  of  farewell, 
found  himself,  when  he  had  at  last  stood  by  it,  be 
guiled  into  long  intensities.  He  stood  for  an  hour, 
powerless  to  turn  away  and  yet  powerless  to  penetrate 
the  darkness  of  death;  fixing  with  his  eyes  her  in 
scribed  name  and  date,  beating  his  forehead  against 
the  fact  of  the  secret  they  kept,  drawing  his  breath, 
while  he  waited  as  if,  in  pity  of  him,  some  sense  would 
rise  from  the  stones.  He  kneeled  on  the  stones,  how 
ever,  in  vain;  they  kept  what  they  concealed;  and  if 
the  face  of  the  tomb  did  become  a  face  for  him  it  was 
because  her  two  names  were  like  a  pair  of  eyes  that 
didn't  know  him.  He  gave  them  a  last  long  look,  but 
no  palest  light  broke. 


VI 

HE  stayed  away,  after  this,  for  a  year  ;  he  visited  the 
depths  of  Asia,  spending  himself  on  scenes  of  romantic 
interest,  of  superlative  sanctity;  but  what  was  present 
to  him  every  where  was  that  for  a  man  who  had  known 
what  he  had  known  the  world  was  vulgar  and  vain. 
The  state  of  mind  in  which  he  had  lived  for  so  many 
years  shone  out  to  him,  in  reflection,  as  a  light  that 
coloured  and  refined,  a  light  beside  which  the  glow  of 
the  East  was  garish,  cheap  and  thin.  The  terrible 
truth  \vas  that  he  had  lost  —  with  everything  else  —  a 

he  saw  couldn't  help 


being  common  when  he  had  become  common  to  look 
at  them.  He  was  simply  now  one  of  them  himself  —  he 
was  in  the  dust,  without  a  peg  for  the  sense  of  differ 
ence;  and  there  were  hours  when,  before  the  temples 
of  gods  and  the  sepulchres  of  kings,  his  spirit  turned, 
for  nobleness  of  association,  to  the  barely  discriminated 
slab  in  the  London  suburb.  That  had  become  for  him, 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

and  more  intensely  with  time  and  distance,  his  one 
witness  of  a  past  glory.  It  was  all  that  was  left 
to  him  for  proof  or  pride,  yet  the  past  glories  of  Pha 
raohs  were  nothing  to  him  as  he  thought  of  it.  Small 
wonder  then  that  he  came  back  to  it  on  the  morrow 
of  his  return.  He  was  drawn  there  this  time  as  ir 
resistibly  as  the  other,  yet  with  a  confidence,  almost, 
that  was  doubtless  the  effect  of  the  many  months  that 
had  elapsed.  He  had  lived,  in  spite  of  himself,  into  his 
change  of  feeling,  and  in  wandering  over  the  earth  had 
wandered,  as  might  be  said,  from  the  circumference 
to  the  centre  of  his  desert.  He  had  settled  to  his  safety 
and  accepted  perforce  his  extinction;  figuring  to  him 
self,  with  some  colour,  in  the  likeness  of  certain  little 
old  men  he  remembered  to  have  seen,  of  whom,  all 
meagre  and  wizened  as  they  might  look,  it  was  related 
that  they  had  in  their  time  fought  twenty  duels  or 
been  loved  by  ten  princesses.  They  indeed  had  been 
wondrous  for  others,  while  he  was  but  wondrous  for 
himself;  which,  however,  was  exactly  the  cause  of  his 
haste  to  renew  the  wonder  by  getting  back,  as  he  might 
put  it,  into  his  own  presence.  That  had  quickened  his 
steps  and  checked  his  delay.  If  his  visit  was  prompt 
it  was  because  he  had  been  separated  so  long  from  the 
part  of  himself  that  alone  he  now  valued. 

It  is  accordingly  not  false  to  say  that  he  reached  his 
goal  with  a  certain  elation,  and  stood  there  again  with 
a  certain  assurance.  The  creature  beneath  the  sod 
knew  of  his  rare  experience,  so  that,  strangely  now,  the 
place  had  lost  for  him  its  mere  blankness  of  expression. 
It  met  him  in  mildness — not,  as  before,  in  mockery; 
it  wore  for  him  the  air  of  conscious  greeting  that  we 
find,  after  absence,  in  things  that  have  closely  belonged 
to  us  and  which  seem  to  confess  of  themselves  to  the 
connection.  The  plot  of  ground,  the  graven  tablet,  the 
tended  flowers  affected  him  so  as  belonging  to  him  that 
he  quite  felt  for  the  hour  like  a  contented  landlord 

238 


THE  BEAST   IN    THE   JUNGLE 

reviewing  a  piece  of  property.  Whatever  had  hap 
pened — well,  had  happened.  He  had  not  come  back 
this  time  with  the  vanity  of  that  question,  his  former 
worrying,  "  What,  what?  "  now  practically  so  spent. 
Yet  he  would,  none  the  less,  never  again  so  cut  himself 
off  from  the  spot;  he  would  come  back  to  it  every 
month,  for  if  he  did  nothing  else  by  its  aid  he  at  least 
held  up  his  head.  It  thus  grew  for  him,  in  the  oddest 
way,  a  positive  resource;  he  carried  out  his  idea  of 
periodical  returns,  which  took  their  place  at  last  among 
the  most  inveterate  of  his  habits.  What  it  all  amount 
ed  to,  oddly  enough,  was  that,  in  his  now  so  simplified 
world,  this  garden  of  death  gave  him  the  few  square 
feet  of  earth  on  which  he  could  still  most  live.  It  was 
as  if,  being  nothing  anywhere  else  for  anyone,  nothing 
even  for  himself,  he  were  just  everything  here,  and  if 
not  for  a  crowd  of  witnesses,  or  indeed  for  any  witness 
but  John  Marcher,  then  by  clear  right  of  the  register 
that  he  could  scan  like  an  open  page.  The  open  page 
was  the  tomb  of  his  friend,  and  there  were  the  facts 
of  the  past,  there  the  truth  of  his  life,  there  the  back 
ward  reaches  in  which  he  could  lose  himself.  He  did 
this,  from  time  to  time,  with  such  effect  that  he  seemed 
to  wander  through  the  old  years  with  his  hand  in  the 
arm  of  a  companion  who  was,  in  the  most  extraor 
dinary  manner,  his  other,  his  younger  self;  and  to 
wander,  which  was  more  extraordinary  yet,  round  and 
round  a  third  presence — not  wandering  she,  but  sta 
tionary,  still,  whose  eyes,  turning  with  his  revolution, 
never  ceased  to  follow  him,  and  whose  seat  was  his 
point,  so  to  speak,  of  orientation.  Thus  in  short  he 
settled  to  live — feeding  only  on  the  sense  that  he  once 
had  lived,  and  dependent  on  it  not  only  for  a  support 
but  for  an  identity. 

It  sufficed  him,  in  its  way,  for  months,  and  the  year 
elapsed;  it  would  doubtless  even  have  carried  him 
further  but  for  an  accident,  superficially  slight,  which 

239 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

moved  him,  in  a  quite  other  direction,  with  a  force 
beyond  any  of  his  impressions  of  Egypt  or  of  India. 
It  was  a  thing  of  the  merest  chance — the  turn,  as  he 
afterwards  felt,  of  a  hair,  though  he  was  indeed  to  live 
to  believe  that  if  light  hadn't  come  to  him  in  this  par 
ticular  fashion  it  would  still  have  come  in  another. 
He  was  to  live  to  believe  this,  I  say,  though  he  was 
not  to  live,  I  may  not  less  definitely  mention,  to  do 
much  else.  We  allow  him  at  any  rate  the  benefit  of 
the  conviction,  struggling  up  for  him  at  the  end,  that, 
whatever  might  have  happened  or  not  happened,  he 
would  have  come  round  of  himself  to  the  light.  The 
incident  of  an  autumn  day  had  put  the  match  to  the 
train  laid  from  of  old  by  his  misery.  With  the  light 
before  him  he  knew  that  even  of  late  his  ache  had  only 
been  smothered.  It  was  strangely  drugged,  but  it 
throbbed ;  at  the  touch  it  began  to  bleed.  AndL  the 
touch,  in  the  event,  was  the  face  of  a  fellow-mortak 
This  face,  one  grey  afternoon  when  the  leaves  were 
thick  in  the  alleys,  looked  into  Marcher's  own,  at  the 
cemetery,  with  an  expression  like  the  cut  of  a  blade. 
He  felt  it,  that  is,  so  deep  down  that  he  winced  at 
the  steady  thrust.  The  person  who  so  mutely  assaulted 
him  was  a  figure  he  had  noticed,  on  reaching  his  own 
goal,  absorbed  by  a  grave  a  short  distance  away,  a 
grave  apparently  fresh,  so  that  the  emotion  of  the  vis 
itor  would  probably  match  it  for  frankness.  This  fact 
alone  forbade  further  attention,  though  during  the 
time  he  stayed  he  remained  vaguely  conscious  of  his 
neighbour,  a  middle-aged  man  apparently,  in  mourning, 
whose  bowed  back,  among  the  clustered  monuments 
and  mortuary  yews,  was  constantly  presented.  March 
er's  theory  that  these  were  elements  in  contact  with 
which  he  himself  revived,  had  suffered,  on  this  occa 
sion,  it  may  be  granted,  a  sensible  though  inscrutable 
check.  The  autumn  day  was  dire  for  him  as  none  had 
recently  been,  and  he  rested  with  a  heaviness  he  had 

240 


THE   BEAST    IN    THE   JUNGLE 

not  yet  known  on  the  low  stone  table  that  bore  May 
Bartram's  name.  He  rested  without  power  to  move, 
as  if  some  spring  in  him,  some  spell  vouchsafed,  had 
suddenly  been  broken  forever.  If  he  could  have  done 
that  moment  as  he  wanted  he  would  simply  have 
stretched  himself  on  the  slab  that  was  ready  to  take 
him,  treating  it  as  a  place  prepared  to  receive  his  last 
sleep.  What  in  all  the  wide  world  had  he  now  to  keep 
awake  for?  He  stared  before  him  with  the  question, 
and  it  was  then  that,  as  one  of  the  cemetery  walks 
passed  near  him,  he  caught  the  shock  of  the  face. 

His  neighbour  at  the  other  grave  had  withdrawn,  as 
he  himself,  with  force  in  him  to  move,  would  have  done 
by  now,  and  was  advancing  along  the  path  on  his  way 
to  one  of  the  gates.  This  brought  him  near,  and  his 
pace  was  slow,  so  that — and  all  the  more  as  there  was 
a  kind  of  hunger  in  his  look — the  two  men  were  for  a 
minute  directly  confronted.  Marcher  felt  him  on  the 
spot  as  one  of  the  deeply  stricken — a  perception  so 
sharp  that  nothing  else  in  the  picture  lived  for  it, 
neither  his  dress,  his  age,  nor  his  presumable  character 
and  class;  nothing  lived  but  the  deep  ravage  of  the 
features  that  he  showed.  He  shoived  them — that  was 
the  point;  he  was  moved,  as  he  passed,  by  some  im 
pulse  that  was  either  a  signal  for  sympathy  or,  more 
possibly,  a  challenge  to  another  sorrow.  He  might 
already  have  been  aware  of  our  friend,  might,  at  some 
previous  hour,  have  noticed  in  him  the  smooth  habit 
of  the  scene,  with  which  the  state  of  his  own  senses  so 
scantly  consorted,  and  might  thereby  have  been  stirred 
as  by  a  kind  of  overt  discord.  What  Marcher  was  at 
all  events  conscious  of  was,  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
imaged  of  scarred  passion  presented  to  him  was  con 
scious  too — of  something  that  profaned  the  air;  and, 
in  the  second,  that,  roused,  startled,  shocked,  he  was 
yet  the  next  moment  looking  after  it,  as  it  went,  with 
envy.  The  most  extraordinary  thing  that  had  happened 

241 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

to  him — though  he  had  given  that  name  to  other  mat 
ters  as  well — took  place,  after  his  immediate  vague 
stare,  as  a  consequence  of  this  impression.  The  stran 
ger  passed,  but  the  raw  glare  of  his  grief  remained, 
making  our  friend  wonder  in  pity  what  wrong,  what 
wound  it  expressed,  what  injury  not  to  be  healed. 
What  had  the  man  had  to  make  him,  by  the  loss  of  it, 
so  bleed  and  yet  live? 

Something — and  this  reached  him  with  a  pang — 
that  he,  John  Marcher,  hadn't ;  the  proof  of  which  was 
precisely  John  Marcher's  arid  end.  No  passion  had 
ever  touched  him,  for  this  was  what  passion  meant; 
he  had  survived  and  maundered  and  pined,  but  where 
had  been  his  deep  ravage?  The  extraordinary  thing 
we  speak  of  was  the  sudden  rush  of  the  result  of  this 
question.  The  sight  that  had  just  met  his  eyes  named 
to  him,  as  in  letters  of  quick  flame,  something  he  had 
utterly,  insanely  missed,  and  what  he  had  missed; 
made  these  things  a  train  of  fire,  made  them  mark 
themselves  in  an  anguish  of  inward  throbs.  He  had 
seen  outside  of  his  life,  not  learned  it  within,  the  way 
a  woman  was  mourned  when  she  had  been  loved  for 
herself;  such  was  the  force  of  his  conviction  of  the 
meaning  of  the  stranger's  face,  which  still  flared  for 
him  like  a  smoky  torch.  It  had  not  come  to  him,  the 
knowledge,  on  the  wings  of  experience ;  it  had  brushed 
him,  jostled  him,  upset  him,  with  the  disrespect  of 
chance,  the  insolence  of  an  accident.  Now  that  the  il 
lumination  had  begun,  however,  it  blazed  to  the  zenith, 
and  what  he  presently  stood  there  gazing  at  was  the 
sounded  void  of  his  life.  He  gazed,  he  drew  breath, 
in  pain ;  he  turned  in  his  dismay,  and,  turning,  he  had 
before  him  in  sharper  incision  than  ever  the  open  page 
of  his  story.  The  name  on  the  table  smote  him  as  the 
passage  of  his  neighbour  had  done,  and  what  it  said  to 
him,  full  in  the  face,  was  that  she  was  what  he  had 
missed..  This  was  the  awful  thought,  the  answer  to 

242 


THE   BEAST    IN   THE   JUNGLE 

all  the  past,  the  vision  at  the  dread  clearness  of  which 
he  turned  as  cold  as  the  stone  beneath  him.  Every 
thing  fell  together,  confessed,  explained,  overwhelmed ; 
leaving  him  most  of  all  stupefied  at  the  blindness  he 
had  cherished.  The  fate  he  had  been  marked  for  he 
had  met  with  a  vengeance— he  had  emptied  the  cup 
to  the  lees;  he  had  been  the  man  of  his  time,  the  man, 
to  whom  nothing  on  earth  was  to  have  happened.  That 
was  the  rare  stroke — that  was  his  visitation.  So  he  saw 
it,  as  we  say,  in  pale  horror,  while  the  pieces  fitted  and 
fitted.  So  she  had  seen  it,  while  he  didn't,  and  so  she 
served  at  this  hour  to  drive  the  truth  home.  It  was 
the  truth,  vivid  and  monstrous,  that  all  the  while  he 
had  waited  the  wait  was  itself  his  portion.  This  the 
companion  of  his  vigil  had  at  a  given  moment  per 
ceived,  and  she  had  then  offered  him  the  chance  to 
baffle  his  doom.  One's  doom,  however,  was  never 
baffled,  and  on  the  day  she  had  told  him  that  his  own 
had  come  down  she  had  seen  him  but  stupidly  stare 
at  the  escape  she  offered  him. 

The  escape  would  have  been  to  love  her ;  then,  then 
he  would  have  lived.  Sfy>  had  hVrf — whn  rnnlH  <^y 
now  with  what  passion  ? — since  she  had  loved  him  for 
himself;  whereas  he  had  never  thought  of  her  (ah, 
how  it  hugely  glared  at  him!)  but  in  the  chill  of  his 
egotism  and  the  light  of  her  use.  Her  spoken  words 
came  back  to  him,  and  the  chain  stretched  and  stretched. 
The  beast  had  lurked  indeed,  and  the  beast,  at  its  hour, 
had  sprung;  it  had  sprung  in  that  twilight  of  the  cold 
April  when,  pale,  ill,  wasted,  but  all  beautiful,  and  per 
haps  even  then  recoverable,  she  had  risen  from  her 
chair  to  stand  before  him  and  let  him  imaginably  guess. 
It  had  sprung  as  he  didn't  guess ;  it  had  sprung  as  she 
hopelessly  turned  from  him,  and  the  mark,  by  the  time 
he  left  her,  had  fallen  where  it  was  to  fall.  He  had 
justified  his  fear  and  achieved  his  fate ;  he  had  failed, 
with  the  last  exactitude,  of  all  he  was  to  fail  of;  and 

243 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

a  moan  now  rose/lo  his  lips  as  he  remembered  she  had 
prayed  he  mightn't  knowjH_This  horror  of  waking — 
this  was  knowledge,  knowledge  under  the  breath  of 
which  the  very  tears  in  his  eyes  seemed  to  freeze. 
Through  them,  none  the  less,  he  tried  to  fix  it  and  hold 
it;  he  kept  it  there  before  him  so  that  he  might  feel 
the  pain.  That  at  least,  belated  and  bitter,  had  some 
thing  of  the  taste  of  life.  But  the  bitterness  suddenly 
sickened  him,  and  it  was  as  if,  horribly,  he  saw,  in 
the  truth,  in  the  cruelty  of  his  image,  what  had  been 
appointed  and  done.  He  saw  the  Jungle  of  his  life 
and  saw  the  lurking  Beast ;  then,  while  he  looked,  per 
ceived  it,  as  by  a  stir  of  the  air,  rise,  huge  and  hideous, 
for  the  leap  that  was  to  settle  him.  His  eyes  dark 
ened — it  was  close;  and,  instinctively  turning,  in  his 
hallucination,  to  avoid  it,  he  flung  himself,  on  his  face, 
on  the  tomb. 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 


IT  seemed  to  them  at  first,  the  offer,  too  good  to  be 
true,  and  their  friend's  letter,  addressed  to  them 
to  feel,  as  he  said,  the  ground,  to  sound  them  as  to  in 
clinations  and  possibilities,  had  almost  the  effect  of  a 
brave  joke  at  their  expense.  Their  friend,  Mr.  Grant- 
Jackson,  a  highly  preponderant,  pushing  person,  great 
in  discussion  and  arrangement,  abrupt  in  overture,  un 
expected,  if  not  perverse,  in  attitude,  and  almost  equal 
ly  acclaimed  and  objected  to  in  the  wide  midland 
region  to  which  he  had  taught,  as  the  phrase  was,  the 
size  of  his  foot — their  friend  had  launched  his  bolt 
quite  out  of  the  blue  and  had  thereby  so  shaken  them 
as  to  make  them  fear  almost  more  than  hope.  The 
place  had  fallen  vacant  by  the  death  of  one  of  the  two 
ladies,  mother  and  daughter,  who  had  discharged  its 
duties  for  fifteen  years;  the  daughter  was  staying  on 
alone,  to  accommodate,  but  had  found,  though  ex 
tremely  mature,  an  opportunity  of  marriage  that  in 
volved  retirement,  and  the  question  of  the  new  in 
cumbents  was  not  a  little  pressing.  The  want  thus 
determined  was  of  a  united  couple  of  some  sort,  of  the 
right  sort,  a  pair  of  educated  and  competent  sisters 
possibly  preferred,  but  a  married  pair  having  its  ad 
vantages  if  other  qualifications  were  marked.  Appli 
cants,  candidates,  besiegers  of  the  door  of  everyone 
supposed  to  have  a  voice  in  the  matter,  were  already 
beyond  counting,  and  Mr.  Grant- Jackson,  who  was  in 

245 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

his  way  diplomatic  and  whose  voice,  though  not  per 
haps  of  the  loudest,  possessed  notes  of  insistence,  had 
found  his  preference  fixing  itself  on  some  person  or 
brace  of  persons  who  had  been  decent  and  dumb.  The 
Gedges  appeared  to  have  struck  him  as  waiting  in 
silence — though  absolutely,  as  happened,  no  busybody 
had  brought  them,  far  away  in  the  north,  a  hint  either 
of  bliss  or  of  danger;  and  the  happy  spell,  for  the 
rest,  had  obviously  been  wrought  in  him  by  a  remem 
brance  which,  though  now  scarcely  fresh,  had  never 
before  borne  any  such  fruit. 

Morris  Gedge  had  for  a  few  years,  as  a  young  man, 
carried  on  a  small  private  school  of  the  order  known 
as  preparatory,  and  had  happened  then  to  receive  under 
his  roof  the  small  son  of  the  great  man,  who  was  not 
at  that  time  so  great.  The  little  boy,  during  an  ab 
sence  of  his  parents  from  England,  had  been  danger 
ously  ill,  so  dangerously  that  they  had  been  recalled 
in  haste,  though  with  inevitable  delays,  from  a  far 
country — they  had  gone  to  America,  with  the  whole 
continent  and  the  great  sea  to  cross  again — and  had 
got  back  to  find  the  child  saved,  but  saved,  as  couldn't 
help  coming  to  light,  by  the  extreme  devotion  and  per 
fect  judgment  of  Mrs.  Gedge.  Without  children  of  her 
own,  she  had  particularly  attached  herself  to  this  tini 
est  and  tenderest  of  her  husband's  pupils,  and  they  had 
both  dreaded  as  a  dire  disaster  the  injury  to  their  little 
enterprise  that  would  be  caused  by  their  losing  him. 
Nervous,  anxious,  sensitive  persons,  with  a  pride — 
as  they  were  for  that  matter  well  aware — above  their 
position,  never,  at  the  best,  to  be  anything  but  dingy, 
they  had  nursed  him  in  terror  and  had  brought  him 
through  in  exhaustion.  Exhaustion,  as  befell,  had  thus 
overtaken  them  early  and  had  for  one  reason  and  an 
other  managed  to  assert  itself  as  their  permanent  por 
tion.  The  little  boy's  death  would,  as  they  said,  have 
done  for  them,  yet  his  recovery  hadn't  saved  them; 

246 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

with  which  it  was  doubtless  also  part  of  a  shy  but 
stiff  candour  in  them  that  they  didn't  regard  themselves 
as  having  in  a  more  indirect  manner  laid  up  treasure. 
Treasure  was  not  to  be,  in  any  form  whatever,  of  their 
dreams  or  of  their  waking  sense;  and  the  years  that 
followed  had  limped  under  their  weight,  had  now  and 
then  rather  grievously  stumbled,  had  even  barely  es 
caped  laying  them  in  the  dust.  The  school  had  not 
prospered,  had  but  dwindled  to  a  close.  Gedge's  health 
had  failed,  and,  still  more,  every  sign  in  him  of  a  capac 
ity  to  publish  himself  as  practical.  He  had  tried  several 
things,  he  had  tried  many,  but  the  final  appearance  was 
of  their  having  tried  him  not  less.  They  mostly,  at 
the  time  I  speak  of,  were  trying  his  successors,  while 
he  found  himself,  with  an  effect  of  dull  felicity  that  had 
come  in  this  case  from  the  mere  postponement  of 
change,  in  charge  of  the  grey  town  library  of  Black- 
port-on-Dwindle,  all  granite,  fog  and  female  fiction. 
This  was  a  situation  in  which  his  general  intelligence 
— acknowledged  as  his  strong  point — was  doubtless 
conceived,  around  him,  as  feeling  less  of  a  strain  than 
that  mastery  of  particulars  in  which  he  was  recognised 
as  weak. 

It  was  at  Blackport-on-Dwindle  that  the  silver  shaft 
reached  and  pierced  him ;  it  was  as  an  alternative  to 
dispensing  dog's-eared  volumes  the  very  titles  of  which, 
on  the  lips  of  innumerable  glib  girls,  were  a  challenge 
to  his  temper,  that  the  wardenship  of  so  different  a 
temple  presented  itself.  The  stipend  named  differed 
little  from  the  slim  wage  at  present  paid  him,  but  even 
had  it  been  less  the  interest  and  the  honour  would  have 
struck  him  as  determinant.  The  shrine  at  which  he 
was  to  preside — though  he  had  always  lacked  occasion 
to  approach  it — figured  to  him  as  the  most  sacred 
known  to  the  steps  of  men,  the  early  home  of  the  su 
preme  poet,  the  Mecca  of  the  English-speaking  race. 
The  tears  came  into  his  eyes  sooner  still  than  into  his 

247 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

wife's  while  he  looked  about  with  her  at  their  actual 
narrow  prison,  so  grim  with  enlightenment,  so  ugly 
with  industry,  so  turned  away  from  any  dream,  so  in 
tolerable  to  any  taste.  He  felt  as  if  a  window  had 
opened  into  a  great  green  woodland,  a  woodland  that 
had  a  name,  glorious,  immortal,  that  was  peopled  with 
vivid  figures,  each  of  them  renowned,  and  that  gave 
out  a  murmur,  deep  as  the  sound  of  the  sea,  which  was 
the  rustle  in  forest  shade  of  all  the  poetry,  the  beauty, 
the  colour  of  life.  It  would  be  prodigious  that  of  this 
transfigured  world  he  should  keep  the  key.  No — he 
couldn't  believe  it,  not  even  when  Isabel,  at  sight  of  his 
face,  came  and  helpfully  kissed  him.  He  shook  his 
head  with  a  strange  smile.  "  We  sha'n't  get  it.  Why 
should  we?  It's  perfect." 

"  If  we  don't  he'll  simply  have  been  cruel ;  which 
is  impossible  when  he  has  waited  all  this  time  to  be 
kind."  Mrs.  Gedge  did  believe — she  'would;  since  the 
wide  doors  of  the  world  of  poetry  had  suddenly  pushed 
back  for  them  it  was  in  the  form  of  poetic  justice  that 
they  were  first  to  know  it.  She  had  her  faith  in  their 
patron ;  it  was  sudden,  but  it  was  now  complete.  "  He 
remembers — that's  all ;  and  that's  our  strength." 

"  And  what's  his?  "  Gedge  asked.  "  He  may  want 
to  put  us  through,  but  that's  a  different  thing  from 
being  able.  What  are  our  special  advantages?  " 

"  Well,  that  we're  just  the  thing."  Her  knowledge 
of  the  needs  of  the  case  was,  as  yet,  thanks  to  scant 
information,  of  the  vaguest,  and  she  had  never,  more 
than  her  husband,  stood  on  the  sacred  spot;  but  she 
saw  herself  waving  a  nicely-gloved  hand  over  a  collec 
tion  of  remarkable  objects  and  saying  to  a  compact 
crowd  of  gaping,  awe-struck  persons :  "  And  now, 
please,  this  way."  She  even  heard  herself  meeting  with 
promptness  and  decision  an  occasional  inquiry  from  a 
visitor  in  whom  audacity  had  prevailed  over  awe.  She 
had  been  once,  with  a  cousin,  years  before,  to  a  great 

248 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

northern  castle,  and  that  was  the  way  the  housekeeper 
had  taken  them  round.  And  it  was  not  moreover, 
either,  that  she  thought  of  herself  as  a  housekeep 
er  :  she  was  well  above  that,  and  the  wave  of  her  hand 
wouldn't  fail  to  be  such  as  to  show  it.  This,  and  much 
else,  she  summed  up  as  she  answered  her  mate.  "  Our 
special  advantages  are  that  you're  a  gentleman." 

"  Oh !  "  said  Gedge,  as  if  he  had  never  thought  of 
it,  and  yet  as  if  too  it  were  scarce  worth  thinking  of. 

"  I  see  it  all,"  she  went  on ;  "  they've  had  the  vulgar 
— they  find  they  don't  do.  We're  poor  and  we're  mod 
est,  but  anyone  can  see  what  we  are." 

Gedge  wondered.  "Do  you  mean ?"  More 

modest  than  she,  he  didn't  know  quite  what  she  meant. 

''  We're  refined.     We  know  how  to  speak." 

"Do  we?" — he  still,  suddenly,  wondered. 

But  she  was,  from  the  first,  surer  of  everything  than 
he;  so  that  when  a  few  weeks  more  had  elapsed  and 
the  shade  of  uncertainty — though  it  was  only  a  shade 
— had  grown  almost  to  sicken  him,  her  triumph  was  to 
come  with  the  news  that  they  were  fairly  named. 
"  We're  on  poor  pay,  though  we  manage  " — she  had 
on  the  present  occasion  insisted  on  her  point.  "  But 
we're  highly  cultivated,  and  for  them  to  get  that,  don't 
you  see?  without  getting  too  much  with  it  in  the  way 
of  pretentious  and  demands,  must  be  precisely  their 
dream.  We've  no  social  position,  but  we  don't  mind 
that  we  haven't,  do  we?  a  bit;  which  is  because  we 
know  the  difference  between  realities  and  shams.  We 
hold  to  reality,  and  that  gives  us  common  sense,  which 
the  vulgar  have  less  than  anything,  and  which  yet  must 
be  wanted  there,  after  all,  as  well  as  anywhere  else." 

Her  companion  followed  her,  but  musingly,  as  if  his 
horizon  had  within  a  few  moments  grown  so  great  that 
he  was  almost  lost  in  it  and  required  a  new  orientation. 
The  shining  spaces  surrounded  him;  the  association 
alone  gave  a  nobler  arch  to  the  sky.  "  Allow  that  we 

249 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

hold  also  a  little  to  the  romance.  It  seems  to  me  that 
that's  the  beauty.  We've  missed  it  all  our  life,  and 
now  it's  come.  We  shall  be  at  head-quarters  for  it. 
We  shall  have  our  fill  of  it." 

She  looked  at  his  face,  at  the  effect  in  it  of  these 
prospects,  and  her  own  lighted  as  if  he  had  suddenly 
grown  handsome.  "  Certainly — we  shall  live  as  in  a 
fairy-tale.  But  what  I  mean  is  that  we  shall  give, 
in  a  way — and  so  gladly — quite  as  much  as  we  get. 
With  all  the  rest  of  it  we're,  for  instance,  neat."  Their 
letter  had  come  to  them  at  breakfast,  and  she  picked 
a  fly  out  of  the  butter-dish.  "  It's  the  way  we'll 
keep  the  place  " — with  which  she  removed  from  the 
sofa  to  the  top  of  the  cottage-piano  a  tin  of  biscuits 
that  had  refused  to  squeeze  into  the  cupboard.  At 
Blackport  they  were  in  lodgings — of  the  lowest  descrip 
tion,  she  had  been  known,  with  a  freedom  felt  by  Black- 
port  to  be  slightly  invidious,  to  declare.  The  Birth 
place — and  that  itself,  after  such  a  life,  was  exaltation 
— wouldn't  be  lodgings,  since  a  house  close  beside  it  was 
set  apart  for  the  warden,  a  house  joining  on  to  it  as 
a  sweet  old  parsonage  is  often  annexed  to  a  quaint 
old  church.  It  would  all  together  be  their  home,  and 
such  a  home  as  would  make  a  little  world  that  they 
would  never  want  to  leave.  She  dwelt  on  the  gain,  for 
that  matter,  to  their  income ;  as-,  obviously,  though  the 
salary  was  not  a  change  for  the  better,  the  house,  given 
them,  would  make  all  the  difference.  He  assented  to 
this,  but  absently,  and  she  was  almost  impatient  at  the 
range  of  his  thoughts.  It  was  as  if  something,  for  him 
— the  very  swarm  of  them — veiled  the  view ;  and  he 
presently,  of  himself,  showed  what  it  was. 

"  What  I  can't  get  over  is  its  being  such  a  man !  " 

He  almost,  from  inward  emotion,  broke  down. 

"Such  a  man ?" 

"  Him,  him,  HIM !  "     It  was  too  much. 

"  Grant-Jackson  ?  Yes,  it's  a  surprise,  but  one  sees 
250 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 

how  he  has  been  meaning,  all  the  while,  the  right 
thing  by  us." 

"  I  mean  Him,"  Gedge  returned  more  coldly;  "  our 
becoming  familiar  and  intimate — for  that's  what  it  will 
come  to.  We  shall  just  live  with  Him." 

"  Of  course — it  is  the  beauty."  And  she  added  quite 
gaily :  "  The  more  we  do  the  more  we  shall  love  Him." 

"  No  doubt — but  it's  rather  awful.  The  more  we 
knozv  Him,"  Gedge  reflected,  "  the  more  we  shall  love 
Him.  We  don't  as  yet,  you  see,  know  Him  so  very 
tremendously." 

"  We  do  so  quite  as  well,  I  imagine,  as  the  sort  of 
people  they've  had.  And  that  probably  isn't — unless 
you  care,  as  we  do — so  awfully  necessary.  For  there 
are  the  facts." 

"  Yes — there  are  the  facts." 

"  I  mean  the  principal  ones.  They're  all  that  the 
people — the  people  who  come — want." 

"  Yes — they  must  be  all  they  want." 

"  So  that  they're  all  that  those  who've  been  in  charge 
have  needed  to  know." 

"  Ah,"  he  said  as  if  it  were  a  question  of  honour, 
"  we  must  know  everything." 

She  cheerfully  acceded:  she  had  the  merit,  he  felt, 
of  keeping  the  case  within  bounds.  "  Everything. 
But  about  him  personally,"  she  added,  "  there  isn't, 
is  there?  so  very,  very  much." 

"  More,  I  believe,  than  there  used  to  be.  They've 
made  discoveries." 

It  was  a  grand  thought.  "  Perhaps  we  shall  make 
some ! " 

"  Oh,  I  shall  be  content  to  be  a  little  better  up  in 
what  has  been  done."  And  his  eyes  rested  on  a  shelf 
of  books,  half  of  which,  little  worn  but  much  faded, 
were  of  the  florid  "  gift  "  order  and  belonged  to  the 
house.  Of  those  among  them  that  were  his  own  most 
were  common  specimens  of  the  reference  sort,  not  ex- 

251 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

eluding  an  old  Bradshaw  and  a  catalogue  of  the 
town-library.  "  We've  not  even  a  Set  of  our  own. 
Of  the  Works,"  he  explained  in  quick  repudiation  of 
the  sense,  perhaps  more  obvious,  in  which  she  might 
have  taken  it. 

As  a  proof  of  their  scant  range  of  possessions  this 
sounded  almost  abject,  till  the  painful  flush  with  which 
they  met  on  the  admission  melted  presently  into  a  dif 
ferent  glow.  It  was  just  for  that  kind  of  poorness  that 
their  new  situation  was,  by  its  intrinsic  charm,  to  con 
sole  them.  And  Mrs.  Gedge  had  a  happy  thought. 
"  Wouldn't  the  Library  more  or  less  have  them  ?  " 

"  Oh  no,  we've  nothing  of  that  sort :  for  what  do 
you  take  us  ?  "  This,  however,  was  but  the  play  of 
Gedge's  high  spirits  :  the  form  both  depression  and  ex 
hilaration  most  frequently  took  with  him  being  a  bitter 
ness  on  the  subject  of  the  literary  taste  of  Blackport. 
No  one  wras  so  deeply  acquainted  with  it.  It  acted  with 
him  in  fact  as  so  lurid  a  sign  of  the  future  that  the 
charm  of  the  thought  of  removal  was  sharply  enhanced 
by  the  prospect  of  escape  from  it.  The  institution  he 
served  didn't  of  course  deserve  the  particular  reproach 
into  which  his  irony  had  flowered;  and  indeed  if  the 
several  Sets  in  which  the  Works  were  present  were  a 
trifle  dusty,  the  dust  was  a  little  his  own  fault.  To 
make  up  for  that  now  he  had  the  vision  of  immediately 
giving  his  time  to  the  study  of  them;  he  saw  himself 
indeed,  inflamed  with  a  new  passion,  earnestly  com 
menting  and  collating.  Mrs.  Gedge,  who  had  sug 
gested  that  they  ought,  till  their  move  should  come, 
to  read  Him  regularly  of  an  evening — certain  as  they 
were  to  do  it  still  more  when  in  closer  quarters  with 
Him — Mrs.  Gedge  felt  also,  in  her  degree,  the  spell; 
so  that  the  very  happiest  time  of  their  anxious  life  was 
perhaps  to  have  been  the  series  of  lamplight  hours,  after 
supper,  in  which,  alternately  taking  the  book,  they  de 
claimed,  they  almost  performed,  their  beneficent  author. 

252 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

He  became  speedily  more  than  their  author — their  per 
sonal  friend,  their  universal  light,  their  final  authority 
and  divinity.  Where  in  the  world,  they  were  already 
asking  themselves,  would  they  have  been  without  him  ? 
By  the  time  their  appointment  arrived  in  form  their 
relation  to  him  had  immensely  developed.  It  was 
amusing  to  Morris  Gedge  that  he  had  so  lately  blushed 
for  his  ignorance,  and  he  made  this  remark  to  his  wife 
during  the  last  hour  they  were  able  to  give  to  their 
study,  before  proceeding,  across  half  the  country,  to 
the  scene  of  their  romantic  future.  It  was  as  if,  in 
deep,  close  throbs,  in  cool  after-waves  that  broke  of 
a  sudden  and  bathed  his  mind,  all  possession  and  com 
prehension  and  sympathy,  all  the  truth  and  the  life 
and  the  story,  had  come  to  him,  and  come,  as  the  news 
papers  said,  to  stay.  "  It's  absurd,"  he  didn't  hesitate 
to  say,  "  to  talk  of  our  not  '  knowing.'  So  far  as  we 
don't  it's  because  we're  donkeys.  He's  in  the  thing, 
over  His  ears,  and  the  more  we  get  into  it  the  more 
we're  with  Him.  I  seem  to  myself  at  any  rate,"  he 
declared,  "  to  see  Him  in  it  as  if  He  were  painted  on 
the  wall." 

"  Oh,  doesn't  one  rather,  the  dear  thing  ?  And  don't 
you  feel  where  it  is?  "  Mrs.  Gedge  finely  asked.  "  We 
see  Him  because  we  love  Him — that's  what  we  do. 
How  can  we  not,  the  old  darling — with  what  He's 
doing  for  us?  There's  no  light" — she  had  a  senten 
tious  turn — "  like  true  affection." 

"  Yes,"  I  suppose  that's  it.  And  yet,"  her  husband 
mused,  "  I  see,  confound  me,  the  faults." 

"  That's  because  you're  so  critical.  You  see  them, 
but  you  don't  mind  them.  You  see  them,  but  you  for 
give  them.  You  mustn't  mention  them  there.  We 
sha'n't,  you  know,  be  there  for  that." 

"  Dear  no !  "  he  laughed :  "  we'll  chuck  out  anyone 
who  hints  at  them." 


253 


THE   BETTER   SORT 


II 

IF  the  sweetness  of  the  preliminary  months  had  been 
great,  great  too,  though  almost  excessive  as  agitation, 
was  the  wonder  of  fairly  being  housed  with  Him,  of 
treading  day  and  night  in  the  footsteps  He  had  worn, 
of  touching  the  objects,  or  at  all  events  the  surfaces, 
the  substances,  over  which  His  hands  had  played,  which 
his  arms,  his  shoulders  had  rubbed,  of  breathing  the 
air — or  something  not  too  unlike  it — in  which  His 
voice  had  sounded.  They  had  had  a  little  at  first  their 
bewilderments,  their  disconcertedness ;  the  place  was 
both  humbler  and  grander  than  they  had  exactly  pre 
figured,  more  at  once  of  a  cottage  and  of  a  museum, 
a  little  more  archaically  bare  and  yet  a  little  more 
richly  official.  But  the  sense  was  strong  with  them 
that  the  point  of  view,  for  the  inevitable  ease  of  the 
connection,  patiently,  indulgently  awaited  them ;  in  ad 
dition  to  which,  from  the  first  evening,  after  closing- 
hour,  when  the  last  blank  pilgrim  had  gone,  the  mere 
spell,  the  mystic  presence — as  if  they  had  had  it  quite 
to  themselves — were  all  they  could  have  desired.  They 
had  received,  by  Grant- Jackson's  care  and  in  addition 
to  a  table  of  instructions  and  admonitions  by  the  num 
ber,  and  in  some  particulars  by  the  nature,  of  which 
they  found  themselves  slightly  depressed,  various  little 
guides,  handbooks,  travellers'  tributes,  literary  memo 
rials  and  other  catch-penny  publications,  which,  how 
ever,  were  to  be  for  the  moment  swallowed  up  in  the 
interesting  episode  of  the  induction  or  initiation  ap 
pointed  for  them  in  advance  at  the  hands  of  several 
persons  whose  connection  with  the  establishment  was, 
as  superior  to  their  own,  still  more  official,  and  at  those 
in  especial  of  one  of  the  ladies  who  had  for  so  many 
years  borne  the  brunt.  About  the  instructions  from 
above,  about  the  shilling  books  and  the  well-known 

254 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

facts  and  the  full-blown  legend,  the  supervision,  the 
subjection,  the  submission,  the  view  as  of  a  cage  in 
which  he  should  circulate  and  a  groove  in  which  he 
should  slide,  Gedge  had  preserved  a  certain  play  of 
mind;  but  all  power  of  reaction  appeared  suddenly  to 
desert  him  in  the  presence  of  his  so  visibly  competent 
predecessor  and  as  an  effect  of  her  good  offices.  He 
had  not  the  resource,  enjoyed  by  his  wife,  of  seeing 
himself,  with  impatience,  attired  in  black  silk  of  a  make 
characterised  by  just  the  right  shade  of  austerity;  so 
that  this  firm,  smooth,  expert  and  consummately  re 
spectable  middle-aged  person  had  him  somehow,  on 
the  whole  ground,  completely  at  her  mercy. 

It  was  evidently  something  of  a  rueful  moment  when, 
as  a  lesson — she  being  for  the  day  or  two  still  in  the 
field — he  accepted  Miss  Putchin's  suggestion  of  "  going 
round  "  with  her  and  with  the  successive  squads  of 
visitors  she  was  there  to  deal  with.  He  appreciated  her 
method — he  saw  there  had  to  be  one;  he  admired  her 
as  succinct  and  definite;  for  there  were  the  facts,  as 
his  wife  had  said  at  Blackport,  and  they  were  to  be 
disposed  of  in  the  time;  yet  he  felt  like  a  very  little 
boy  as  he  dangled,  more  than  once,  with  Mrs.  Gedge, 
at  the  tail  of  the  human  comet.  The  idea  had  been 
that  they  should,  by  this  attendance,  more  fully  em 
brace  the  possible  accidents  and  incidents,  as  it  were, 
of  the  relation  to  the  great  public  in  which  they  were 
to  find  themselves;  and  the  poor  man's  excited  per 
ception  of  the  great  public  rapidly  became  such  as  to 
resist  any  diversion  meaner  than  that  of  the  admirable 
manner  of  their  guide.  It  wandered  from  his  gaping 
companions  to  that  of  the  priestess  in  black  silk,  whom 
he  kept  asking  himself  if  either  he  or  Isabel  could  hope 
by  any  possibility  ever  remotely  to  resemble;  then  it 
bounded  restlessly  back  to  the  numerous  persons  who 
revealed  to  him,  as  it  had  never  yet  been  revealed,  the 
happy  power  of  the  simple  to  hang  upon  the  lips  of 

255 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

the  wise.  The  great  thing  seemed  to  be — and  quite 
surprisingly — that  the  business  was  easy  and  the  strain, 
which  as  a  strain  they  had  feared,  moderate ;  so  that  he 
might  have  been  puzzled,  had  he  fairly  caught  himself 
in  the  act,  by  his  recognising  as  the  last  effect  of  the 
impression  an  odd  absence  of  the  ability  to  rest  in  it, 
an  agitation  deep  within  him  that  vaguely  threatened 
to  grow.  "  It  isn't,  you  see,  so  very  complicated,"  the 
black  silk  lady  seemed  to  throw  off,  with  everything 
else,  in  her  neat,  crisp,  cheerful  way ;  in  spite  of  which 
he  already,  the  very  first  time — that  is  after  several 
parties  had  been  in  and  out  and  up  and  down — went 
so  far  as  to  wonder  if  there  weren't  more  in  it  than 
she  imagined.  She  was,  so  to  speak,  kindness  itself — 
was  all  encouragement  and  reassurance;  but  it  was 
just  her  slightly  coarse  redolence  of  these  very  things 
that,  on  repetition,  before  they  parted,  dimmed  a  little, 
as  he  felt,  the  light  of  his  acknowledging  smile.  That, 
again,  she  took  for  a  symptom  of  some  pleading  weak 
ness  in  him — he  could  never  be  as  brave  as  she;  so 
that  she  wound  up  writh  a  few  pleasant  words  from 
the  very  depth  of  her  experience.  "  You'll  get  into  it, 
never  fear — it  will  come;  and  then  you'll  feel  as  if  you 
had  never  done  anything  else."  He  was  afterwards  to 
know  that,  on  the  spot,  at  this  moment,  he  must  have 
begun  to  wince  a  little  at  such  a  menace ;  that  he  might 
come  to  feel  as  if  he  had  never  done  anything  but  what 
Miss  Putchin  did  loomed  for  him,  in  germ,  as  a  penalty 
to  pay.  The  support  she  offered,  none  the  less,  con 
tinued  to  strike  him;  she  put  the  whole  thing  on  so 
sound  a  basis  when  she  said :  "  You  see  they're  so  nice 
about  it — they  take  such  an  interest.  And  they  never 
do  a  thing  they  shouldn't.  That  was  always  every 
thing  to  mother  and  me."  "  They,"  Gedge  had  al 
ready  noticed,  referred  constantly  and  hugely,  in  the 
good  woman's  talk,  to  the  millions  who  shuffled 
through  the  house;  the  pronoun  in  question  was  for- 

256 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 

ever  on  her  lips,  the  hordes  it  represented  filled  her 
consciousness,  the  addition  of  their  numbers  ministered 
to  her  glory.  Mrs.  Gedge  promptly  met  her.  "It 
must  be  indeed  delightful  to  see  the  effect  on  so  many, 
and  to  feel  that  one  may  perhaps  do  something  to  make 
it — well,  permanent."  But  he  was  kept  silent  by  his 
becoming  more  sharply  aware  that  this  was  a  new 
view,  for  him,  of  the  reference  made,  that  he  had  never 
thought  of  the  quality  of  the  place  as  derived  from 
Them,  but  from  Somebody  Else,  and  that  They,  in 
short,  seemed  to  have  got  into  the  way  of  crowding 
out  Him.  He  found  himself  even  a  little  resenting 
this  for  Him,  which  perhaps  had  something  to  do  with 
the  slightly  invidious  cast  of  his  next  inquiry. 

"  And  are  They  always,  as  one  might  say — a — 
stupid?" 

"  Stupid !  "  She  stared,  looking  as  if  no  one  could 
be  such  a  thing  in  such  a  connection.  No  one  had  ever 
been  anything  but  neat  and  cheerful  and  fluent,  except 
to  be  attentive  and  unobjectionable  and,  so  far  as  was 
possible,  American. 

"  What  I  mean  is,"  he  explained,  "  is  there  any  per 
ceptible  proportion  that  take  an  interest  in  Him  ?  " 

His  wife  stepped  on  his  toe;  she  deprecated  irony. 
But  his  mistake  fortunately  was  lost  on  their  friend. 
"  That's  just  why  they  come,  that  they  take  such  an 
interest.  I  sometimes  think  they  take  more  than  about 
anything  else  in  the  world."  With  which  Miss  Putchin 
looked  about  at  the  place.  "  It  is  pretty,  don't  you 
think,  the  way  they've  got  it  now  ?  "  This,  Gedge 
saw,  was  a  different  "  They  "  ;  it  applied  to  the  pow 
ers  that  were — the  people  who  had  appointed  him,  the 
governing,  visiting  Body,  in  respect  to  which  he  was 
afterwards  to  remark  to  Mrs.  Gedge  that  a  fellow — 
it  was  the  difficulty — didn't  know  "  where  to  have  her." 
His  wife,  at  a  loss,  questioned  at  that  moment  the  neces 
sity  of  having  her  anywhere,  and  he  said,  good-hu- 

257 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

mouredly,  "  Of  course;  it's  all  right."  He  was  in  fact 
content  enough  with  the  last  touches  their  friend  had 
given  the  picture.  "  There  are  many  who  know  all 
about  it  when  they  come,  and  the  Americans  often  are 
tremendously  up.  Mother  and  me  really  enjoyed  " — 
it  was  her  only  slip — "  the  interest  of  the  Americans. 
We've  sometimes  had  ninety  a  day,  and  all  wanting 
to  see  and  hear  everything.  But  you'll  work  them  off ; 
you'll  see  the  way — it's  all  experience."  She  came 
back,  for  his  comfort,  to  that.  She  came  back  also  to 
other  things :  she  did  justice  to  the  considerable  class 
who  arrived  positive  and  primed.  "  There  are  those 
who  know  more  about  it  than  you  do.  But  that  only 
comes  from  their  interest." 

''  Who  know  more  about  what  ?  "  Gedge  inquired. 

"  Why,  about  the  place.  I  mean  they  have  their 
ideas — of  what  everything  is,  and  where  it  is,  and  what 
it  isn't,  and  where  it  should  be.  They  do  ask  ques 
tions,"  she  said,  yet  not  so  much  in  warning  as  in  the 
complacency  of  being  seasoned  and  sound ;  "  and 
they're  down  on  you  when  they  think  you  go  wrong. 
As  if  you  ever  could!  You  know  too  much,"  she 
sagaciously  smiled ;  "  or  you  will." 

"  Oh,  you  mustn't  know  too  much,  must  you  ?  "  And 
Gedge  now  smiled  as  well.  He  knew,  he  thought,  what 
he  meant. 

:<  Well,  you  must  know  as  much  as  anybody  else. 
I  claim,  at  any  rate,  that  I  do,"  Miss  Putchin  declared. 
"  They  never  really  caught  me." 

"  I'm  very  sure  of  that"  Mrs.  Gedge  said  with  an 
elation  almost  personal. 

"  Certainly,"  he  added,  "  I  don't  want  to  be  caught." 
She  rejoined  that,  in  such  a  case,  he  would  have  Them 
down  on  him,  and  he  saw  that  this  time  she  meant  the 
powers  above.  It  quickened  his  sense  of  all  the  ele 
ments  that  were  to  reckon  with,  yet  he  felt  at  the  same 
time  that  the  powers  above  were  not  what  he  should 

258 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

most  fear.  "  I'm  glad,"  he  observed,  "  that  they  ever 
ask  questions;  but  I  happened  to  notice,  you  know, 
that  no  one  did  to-day." 

"  Then  you  missed  several — and  no  loss.  There 
were  three  or  four  put  to  me  too  silly  to  remember. 
But  of  course  they  mostly  are  silly." 

"  You  mean  the  questions?  " 

She  laughed  with  all  her  cheer.  "  Yes,  sir ;  I  don't 
mean  the  answers." 

Whereupon,  for  a  moment  snubbed  and  silent,  he 
felt  like  one  of  the  crowd.  Then  it  made  him  slightly 
vicious.  "  I  didn't  know  but  you  meant  the  people  in 
general — till  I  remembered  that  I'm  to  understand 
from  you  that  they're  wise,  only  occasionally  breaking 
down." 

It  was  not  really  till  then,  he  thought,  that  she  lost 
patience;  and  he  had  had,  much  more  than  he  meant 
no  doubt,  a  cross-questioning  air.  "  You'll  see  for 
yourself."  Of  which  he  was  sure  enough.  He  was  in 
fact  so  ready  to  take  this  that  she  came  round  to  full 
accommodation,  put  it  frankly  that  every  now  and  then 
they  broke  out — not  the  silly,  oh  no,  the  intensely  in 
quiring.  "  We've  had  quite  lively  discussions,  don't 
you  know,  about  well-known  points.  They  want  it  all 
their  way,  and  I  know  the  sort  that  are  going  to  as 
soon  as  I  see  them.  That's  one  of  the  things  you  do — 
you  get  to  know  the  sorts.  And  if  it's  what  you're 
afraid  of — their  taking  you  up,"  she  was  further  gra 
cious  enough  to  say,  "  you  needn't  mind  a  bit.  What 
do  they  know,  after  all,  when  for  us  it's  our  life?  I've 
never  moved  an  inch,  because,  you  see,  I  shouldn't  have 
been  here  if  I  didn't  know  where  I  was.  No  more  will 
you  be  a  year  hence — you  know  what  I  mean,  put 
ting  it  impossibly — if  you  don't.  I  expect  you  do,  in 
spite  of  your  fancies."  And  she  dropped  once  more  to 
bed-rock.  "  There  are  the  facts.  Otherwise  where 
would  any  of  us  be  ?  That's  all  you've  got  to  go  upon. 

259 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

A  person,  however  cheeky,  can't  have  them  his  way 
just  because  he  takes  it  into  his  head.  There  can  only 
be  one  way,  and,"  she  gaily  added  as  she  took  leave 
of  them,  "  I'm  sure  it's  quite  enough !  " 

III 

GEDGE  not  only  assented  eagerly — one  way  was  quite 
enough  if  it  were  the  right  one — but  repeated  it,  after 
this  conversation,  at  odd  moments,  several  times  over 
to  his  wife.  "There  can  only  be  one  way,  one  way," 
he  continued  to  remark — though  indeed  much  as  if  it 
were  a  joke ;  till  she  asked  him  how  many  more  he  sup 
posed  she  wanted.  He  failed  to  answer  this  question, 
but  resorted  to  another  repetition,  "There  are  the  facts, 
the  facts,"  which,  perhaps,  however,  he  kept  a  little 
more  to  himself,  sounding  it  at  intervals  in  different 
parts  of  the  house.  Mrs.  Gedge  was  full  of  comment 
on  their  clever  introductress,  though  not  restrictively 
save  in  the  matter  of  her  speech,  "Me  and  mother,"  and 
a  general  tone — which  certainly  was  not  their  sort  of 
thing.  "I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "perhaps  it  comes  with 
the  place,  since  speaking  in  immortal  verse  doesn't 
seem  to  come.  It  must  be,  one  seems  to  see,  one  thing 
or  the  other.  I  dare  say  that  in  a  few  months  I  shall 
also  be  at  it — 'me  and  the  wife.' ' 

"Why  not  me  and  the  missus  at  once?"  Mrs.  Gedge 
resentfully  inquired.  "I  don't  think,"  she  observed  at 
another  time,  "that  I  quite  know  what's  the  matter  with 
you." 

"It's  only  that  I'm  excited,  awfully  excited — as  I 
don't  see  how  one  can  not  be.  You  wouldn't  have  a 
fellow  drop  into  this  berth  as  into  an  appointment  at 
the  Post  Office.  Here  on  the  spot  it  goes  to  my  head ; 
how  can  that  be  helped  ?  But  we  shall  live  into  it,  and 
perhaps,"  he  said  with  an  implication  of  the  other  pos 
sibility  that  was  doubtless  but  part  of  his  fine  ecstasy, 

260 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

"we  shall  live  through  it."  The  place  acted  on  his 
imagination — how,  surely,  shouldn't  it?  And  his 
imagination  acted  on  his  nerves,  and  these  things  to 
gether,  with  the  general  vividness  and  the  new  and 
complete  immersion,  made  rest  for  him  almost  impos 
sible,  so  that  he  could  scarce  go  to  bed  at  night  and  even 
during  the  first  week  more  than  once  rose  in  the  small 
hours  to  move  about,  up  and  down,  with  his  lamp, 
standing,  sitting,  listening,  wondering,  in  the  stillness, 
as  if  positively  to  recover  some  echo,  to  surprise  some 
secret,  of  the  genius  loci.  He  couldn't  have  explained 
it — and  didn't  in  fact  need  to  explain  it,  at  least  to  him 
self,  since  the  impulse  simply  held  him  and  shook  him ; 
but  the  time  after  closing,  the  time  above  all  after  the 
people — Them,  as  he  felt  himself  on  the  way  to  think 
of  them,  predominant,  insistent,  all  in  the  foreground — 
brought  him,  or  ought  to  have  brought  him,  he  seemed 
to  see,  nearer  to  the  enshrined  Presence,  enlarged  the 
opportunity  for  communion  and  intensified  the  sense  of 
it.  These  nightly  prowls,  as  he  called  them,  were  dis 
quieting  to  his  wife,  who  had  no  disposition  to  share  in 
them,  speaking  with  decision  of  the  whole  place  as  just 
the  place  to  be  forbidding  after  dark.  She  rejoiced  in 
the  distinctness,  contiguous  though  it  was,  of  their  own 
little  residence,  where  she  trimmed  the  lamp  and  stirred 
the  fire  and  heard  the  kettle  sing,  repairing  the  while  the 
omissions  of  the  small  domestic  who  slept  out ;  she  fore 
saw  herself  with  some  promptness,  drawing  rather 
sharply  the  line  between  her  own  precinct  and  that  in 
which  the  great  spirit  might  walk.  It  would  be  with 
them,  the  great  spirit,  all  day — even  if  indeed  on  her 
making  that  remark,  and  in  just  that  form,  to  her  hus 
band,  he  replied  with  a  queer  "But  will  he  though?" 
And  she  vaguely  imaged  the  development  of  a  domestic 
antidote  after  a  while,  precisely,  in  the  shape  of  cur 
tains  more  markedly  drawn  and  everything  most  mod 
ern  and  lively,  tea,  "patterns,"  the  newspapers,  the  fe- 

261 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

male  fiction  itself  that  they    had    reacted    against    at 
Blackport,  quite  defiantly  cultivated. 

These  possibilities,  however,  were  all  right,  as  her 
companion  said  it  was,  all  the  first  autumn — they  had 
arrived  at  summer's  end ;  as  if  he  were  more  than  con 
tent  with  a  special  set  of  his  own  that  he  had  access  to 
from  behind,  passing  out  of  their  low  door  for  the  few 
steps  between  it  and  the  Birthplace.  With  his  lamp 
ever  so  carefully  guarded,  and  his  nursed  keys  that 
made  him  free  of  treasures,  he  crossed  the  dusky  inter 
val  so  often  that  she  began  to  qualify  it  as  a  habit  that 
"  grew."  She  spoke  of  it  almost  as  if  he  had  taken  to 
drink,  and  he  humoured  that  view  of  it  by  confessing 
that  the  cup  was  strong.  This  had  been  in  truth,  al 
together,  his  immediate  sense  of  it;  strange  and  deep 
for  him  the  spell  of  silent  sessions  before  familiarity 
and,  to  some  small  extent,  disappointment  had  set  in. 
The  exhibitional  side  of  the  establishment  had  struck 
him,  even  on  arrival,  as  qualifying  too  much  its  charac 
ter  ;  he  scarce  knew  what  he  might  best  have  looked  for, 
but  the  three  or  four  rooms  bristled  overmuch,  in  the 
garish  light  of  day,  with  busts  and  relics,  not  even 
ostensibly  always  His,  old  prints  and  old  editions,  old 
objects  fashioned  in  His  likeness,  furniture  "of  the 
time"  and  autographs  of  celebrated  worshippers.  In 
the  quiet  hours  and  the  deep  dusk,  none  the  less,  under 
the  play  of  the  shifted  lamp  and  that  of  his  own  emo 
tion,  these  things  too  recovered  their  advantage,  min 
istered  to  the  mystery,  or  at  all  events  to  the  impression, 
seemed  consciously  to  offer  themselves  as  personal  to 
the  poet.  Not  one  of  them  was  really  or  unchallenge- 
ably  so,  but  they  had  somehow,  through  long  associa 
tion,  got,  as  Gedge  always  phrased  it,  into  the  secret, 
and  it  was  about  the  secret  he  asked  them  while  he  rest 
lessly  wandered.  It  was  not  till  months  had  elapsed 
that  he  found  how  little  they  had  to  tell  him,  and  he  was 
quite  at  his  ease  with  them  when  he  knew  they  were 

262 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

by  no  means  where  his  sensibility  had  first  placed  them. 
They  were  as  out  of  it  as  he ;  only,  to  do  them  justice, 
they  had  made  him  immensely  feel.  And  still,  too,  it 
was  not  they  who  had  done  that  most,  since  his  senti 
ment  had  gradually  cleared  itself  to  deep,  to  deeper  re 
finements. 

The  Holy  of  Holies  of  the  Birthplace  was  the  low,  the 
sublime  Chamber  of  Birth,  sublime  because,  as  the 
Americans  usually  said — unlike  the  natives  they  mostly 
found  words — it  was  so  pathetic ;  and  pathetic  because 
it  was — well,  really  nothing  else  in  the  world  that  one 
could  name,  number  or  measure.  It  was  as  empty  as  a 
shell  of  which  the  kernel  has  withered,  and  contained 
neither  busts  nor  prints  nor  early  copies;  it  contained 
only  the  Fact — the  Fact  itself — which,  as  he  stood  sen 
tient  there  at  midnight,  our  friend,  holding  his  breath, 
allowed  to  sink  into  him.  He  had  to  take  it  as  the 
place  where  the  spirit  would  most  walk  and  where  he 
would  therefore  be  most  to  be  met,  with  possibilities  of 
recognition  and  reciprocity.  He  hadn't,  most  prob 
ably — He  hadn't — much  inhabited  the  room,  as  men 
weren't  apt,  as  a  rule,  to  convert  to  their  later  use  and 
involve  in  their  wider  fortune  the  scene  itself  of  their 
nativity.  But  as  there  were  moments  when,  in  the 
conflict  of  theories,  the  sole  certainty  surviving  for  the 
critic  threatened  to  be  that  He  had  not — unlike  other 
successful  men — not  been  born,  so  Gedge,  though  little 
of  a  critic,  clung  to  the  square  feet  of  space  that  con 
nected  themselves,  however  feebly,  with  the  positive 
appearance.  He  was  little  of  a  critic — he  was  nothing 
of  one;  he  hadn't  pretended  to  the  character  before 
coming,  nor  come  to  pretend  to  it ;  also,  luckily  for  him, 
he  was  seeing  day  by  day  how  little  use  he  could  pos 
sibly  have  for  it.  It  would  be  to  him,  the  attitude  of  a 
high  expert,  distinctly  a  stumbling-block,  and  that  he 
rejoiced,  as  the  winter  waned,  in  his  ignorance,  was  one 
of  the  propositions  he  betook  himself,  in  his  odd  man- 

263 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

ner,  to  enunciating  to  his  wife.  She  denied  it,  for 
hadn't  she,  in  the  first  place,  been  present,  wasn't  she 
still  present,  at  his  pious,  his  tireless  study  of  every 
thing  connected  with  the  subject? — so  present  that  she 
had  herself  learned  more  about  it  than  had  ever  seemed 
likely.  Then,  in  the  second  place,  he  was  not  to  pro 
claim  on  the  housetops  any  point  at  which  he  might  be 
weak,  for  who  knew,  if  it  should  get  abroad  that  they 
were  ignorant,  what  effect  might  be  produced ? 

"On  the  attraction" — he  took  her  up — "of  the 
Show?" 

He  had  fallen  into  the  harmless  habit  of  speaking  of 
the  place  as  the  "Show";  but  she  didn't  mind  this  so 
much  as  to  be  diverted  by  it.  "No ;  on  the  attitude  of 
the  Body.  You  know  they're  pleased  with  us,  and  I 
don't  see  why  you  should  want  to  spoil  it.  We  got  in 
by  a  tight  squeeze — you  know  we've  had  evidence  of 
that,  and  that  it  was  about  as  much  as  our  backers  could 
manage.  But  we're  proving  a  comfort  to  them,  and 
it's  absurd  of  you  to  question  your  suitability  to  people 
who  were  content  with  the  Putchins." 

"I  don't,  my  dear,"  he  returned,  "question  anything : 
but  if  I  should  do  so  it  would  be  precisely  because  of  the 
greater  advantage  constituted  for  the  Putchins  by  the 
simplicity  of  their  spirit.  They  were  kept  straight  by 
the  quality  of  their  ignorance — which  was  denser  even 
than  mine.  It  was  a  mistake  in  us,  from  the  first,  to 
have  attempted  to  correct  or  to  disguise  ours.  We 
should  have  waited  simply  to  become  good  parrots,  to 
learn  our  lesson — all  on  the  spot  here,  so  little  of  it  is 
wanted — and  squawk  if  off." 

"Ah,  'squawk,'  love — what  a  word  to  use  about 
Him!" 

"It  isn't  about  Him — nothing's  about  Him.  None 
of  Them  care  tuppence  about  Him.  The  only  thing 
They  care  about  is  this  empty  shell — or  rather,  for  it 
isn't  empty,  the  extraneous,  preposterous  stuffing  of 
it." 

264 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

"Preposterous  ?" — he  made  her  stare  with  this  as  he 
had  not  yet  done. 

At  sight  of  her  look,  however — the  gleam,  as  it 
might  have  been,  of  a  queer  suspicion — he  bent  to  her 
kindly  and  tapped  her  cheek.  "Oh,  it's  all  right.  We 
must  fall  back  on  the  Putchins.  Do  you  remember 
what  she  said  ? — 'They've  made  it  so  pretty  now.'  They 
have  made  it  pretty,  and  it's  a  first-rate  show.  It's  a 
first-rate  show  and  a  first-rate  billet,  and  He  was  a  first- 
rate  poet,  and  you're  a  first-rate  woman — to  put  up  so 
sweetly,  I  mean,  with  my  nonsense." 

She  appreciated  his  domestic  charm  and  she  justified 
that  part  of  his  tribute  which  concerned  herself.  "I 
don't  care  how  much  of  your  nonsense  you  talk  to  me, 
so  long  as  you  keep  it  all  for  me  and  don't  treat  Them 
to  it."' 

"The  pilgrims?  No,"  he  conceded — "it  isn't  fair  to 
Them.  They  mean  well." 

"What  complaint  have  we,  after  all,  to  make  of  Them 
so  long  as  They  don't  break  off  bits — as  They  used, 
Miss  Putchin  told  us,  so  awfully — to  conceal  about 
Their  Persons?  She  broke  them  at  least  of  that." 

"Yes,"  Gedge  mused  again;  "I  wish  awfully  she 
hadn't!" 

"You  would  like  the  relics  destroyed,  removed? 
That's  all  that's  wanted!" 

"There  are  no  relics." 

"There  won't  be  any  soon,  unless  you  take  care." 
But  he  was  already  laughing,  and  the  talk  was  not 
dropped  without  his  having  patted  her  once  more.  An 
impression  or  two,  however,  remained  with  her  from  it, 
as  he  saw  from  a  question  she  asked  him  on  the  morrow. 
"What  did  you  mean  yesterday  about  Miss  Putchin's 
simplicity — its  keeping  her  'straight'?  Do  you  mean 
mentally?" 

Her  "mentally"  was  rather  portentous,  but  he  prac 
tically  confessed.  "Well,  it  kept  her  up.  I  mean,"  he 
amended,  laughing,  "it  kept  her  down." 

265 


THE   BETTER    SORT 

It  was  really  as  if  she  had  been  a  little  uneasy.  "You 
consider  there's  a  danger  of  your  being  affected  ?  You 
know  what  I  mean.  Of  its  going  to  your  head.  You 
do  know,"  she  insisted  as  he  said  nothing,  "  through 
your  caring  for  him  so.  You'd  certainly  be  right  in 
that  case  about  its  having  been  a  mistake  for  you  to 
plunge  so  deep."  And  then  as  his  listening  without  re 
ply,  though  with  his  look  a  little  sad  for  her,  might 
have  denoted  that,  allowing  for  extravagance  of  state 
ment,  he  saw  there  was  something  in  it :  "Give  up 
your  prowls.  Keep  it  for  daylight.  Keep  it  for 
Them." 

"Ah,"  he  smiled,  "if  one  could!  My  prowls,"  he 
added,  "are  what  I  most  enjoy.  They're  the  only  time, 
as  I've  told  you  before,  that  I'm  really  with  Him.  Then 
I  don't  see  the  place.  He  isn't  the  place." 

"I  don't  care  for  what  you  'don't'  see,"  she  replied 
with  vivacity;  "the  question  is  of  what  you  do  see." 

Well,  if  it  was,  he  waited  before  meeting  it.  "Do 
you  know  what  I  sometimes  do?"  And  then  as  she 
waited  too :  "In  the  Birthroom  there,  when  I  look  in 
late,  I  often  put  out  my  light.  That  makes  it  better." 

"Makes  what ?" 

"Everything." 

"What  is  it  then  you  see  in  the  dark?" 

"Nothing!"  said  Morris  Gedge. 

"And  what's  the  pleasure  of  that  ?" 

"Well,  what  the  American  ladies  say.  It's  so  fas 
cinating." 

IV 

THE  autumn  was  brisk,  as  Miss  Putchin  had  told  them 
it  would  be,  but  business  naturally  fell  off  with  the 
winter  months  and  the  short  days.  There  was  rarely 
an  hour  indeed  without  a  call  of  some  sort,  and  they 
were  never  allowed  to  forget  that  they  kept  the  shop  in 
all  the  world,  as  they  might  say,  where  custom  was 

266 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

least  fluctuating.  The  seasons  told  on  it,  as  they  tell 
upon  travel,  but  no  other  influence,  consideration  or 
convulsion  to  which  the  population  of  the  globe  is  ex 
posed.  This  population,  never  exactly  in  simultaneous 
hordes,  but  in  a  full,  swift  and  steady  stream,  passed 
through  the  smoothly-working  mill  and  went,  in  its 
variety  of  degrees  duly  impressed  and  edified,  on  its 
artless  way.  Gedge  gave  himself  up,  with  much  in 
genuity  of  spirit,  to  trying  to  keep  in  relation  with  it; 
having  even  at  moments,  in  the  early  time,  glimpses  of 
the  chance  that  the  impressions  gathered  from  so  rare 
an  opportunity  for  contact  with  the  general  mind  might 
prove  as  interesting  as  anything  else  in  the  connection. 
Types,  classes,  nationalities,  manners,  diversities  of  be 
haviour,  modes  of  seeing,  feeling,  of  expression,  would 
pass  before  him  and  become  for  him,  after  a  fashion, 
the  experience  of  an  untravelled  man.  His  journeys 
had  been  short  and  saving,  but  poetic  justice  again 
seemed  inclined  to  work  for  him  in  placing  him  just  at 
the  point  in  all  Europe  perhaps  where  the  confluence  of 
races  was  thickest.  The  theory,  at  any  rate,  carried 
him  on,  operating  helpfully  for  the  term  of  his  anxious 
beginnings  and  gilding  in  a  manner — it  was  the  way  he 
characterised  the  case  to  his  wife — the  somewhat  stodgy 
gingerbread  of  their  daily  routine.  They  had  not 
known  many  people,  and  their  visiting-list  was  small — 
which  made  it  again  poetic  justice  that  they  should  be 
visited  on  such  a  scale.  They  dressed  and  were  at 
home,  they  were  under  arms  and  received,  and  except 
for  the  offer  of  refreshment — and  Gedge  had  his  view 
that  there  would  eventually  be  a  buffet  farmed  out  to  a 
great  firm — their  hospitality  would  have  made  them 
princely  if  mere  hospitality  ever  did.  Thus  they  were 
launched,  and  it  was  interesting,  and  from  having  been 
ready  to  drop,  originally,  with  fatigue,  they  emerged 
even-winded  and  strong  in  the  legs,  as  if  they  had  had 
an  Alpine  holiday.  This  experience,  Gedge  opined, 

267 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

also  represented,  as  a  gain,  a  like  seasoning  of  the 
spirit — by  which  he  meant  a  certain  command  of  im 
penetrable  patience. 

The  patience  was  needed  for  the  particular  feature 
of  the  ordeal  that,  by  the  time  the  lively  season  was  with 
them  again,  had  disengaged  itself  as  the  sharpest — the 
immense  assumption  of  veracities  and  sanctities,  of  the 
general  soundness  of  the  legend  with  which  everyone 
arrived.  He  was  well  provided,  certainly,  for  meeting 
it,  and  he  gave  all  he  had,  yet  he  had  sometimes  the 
sense  of  a  vague  resentment  on  the  part  of  his  pilgrims 
at  his  not  ladling  out  their  fare  with  a  bigger  spoon. 
An  irritation  had  begun  to  grumble  in  him  during  the 
comparatively  idle  months  of  winter  when  a  pilgrim 
would  turn  up  singly.  The  pious  individual,  enter 
tained  for  the  half-hour,  had  occasionally  seemed  to 
offer  him  the  promise  of  beguilement  or  the  semblance 
of  a  personal  relation;  it  came  back  again  to  the  few 
pleasant  calls  he  had  received  in  the  course  of  a  life 
almost  void  of  social  amenity.  Sometimes  he  liked  the 
person,  the  face,  the  speech :  an  educated  man,  a  gentle 
man,  not  one  of  the  herd;  a  graceful  woman,  vague, 
accidental,  unconscious  of  him,  but  making  him  won 
der,  while  he  hovered,  who  she  was.  These  chances 
represented  for  him  light  yearnings  and  faint  flutters; 
they  acted  indeed,  within  him,  in  a  special,  an  ex 
traordinary  way.  He  would  have  liked  to  talk  with 
such  stray  companions,  to  talk  with  them  really,  to 
talk  with  them  as  he  might  have  talked  if  he  had 
met  them  where  he  couldn't  meet  them — at  dinner, 
in  the  "  world,"  on  a  visit  at  a  country-house.  Then 
he  could  have  said — and  about  the  shrine  and  the 
idol  always — things  he  couldn't  say  now.  The  form 
in  which  his  irritation  first  came  to  him  was  that 
of  his  feeling  obliged  to  say  to  them  —  to  the 
single  visitor,  even  when  sympathetic,  quite  as  to 
the  gaping  group — the  particular  things,  a  dreadful 

268 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

dozen  or  so,  that  they  expected.  If  he  had  thus  ar 
rived  at  characterising  these  things  as  dreadful  the 
reason  touches  the  very  point  that,  for  a  while  turning 
everything  over,  he  kept  dodging,  not  facing,  trying  to 
ignore.  The  point  was  that  he  was  on  his  way  to  be 
come  two  quite  different  persons,  the  public  and  the  pri 
vate,  and  yet  that  it  would  somehow  have  to  be  man 
aged  that  these  persons  should  live  together.  He  was 
splitting  into  halves,  unmistakeably — he  who,  whatever 
else  he  had  been,  had  at  least  always  been  so  entire  and, 
in  his  way,  so  solid.  One  of  the  halves,  or  perhaps 
even,  since  the  split  promised  to  be  rather  unequal,  one 
of  the  quarters,  was  the  keeper,  the  showman,  the  priest 
of  the  idol;  the  other  piece  was  the  poor  unsuccessful 
honest  man  he  had  always  been. 

There  were  moments  when  he  recognized  this  pri 
mary  character  as  he  had  never  done  before;  when  he 
in  fact  quite  shook  in  his  shoes  at  the  idea  that  it  per 
haps  had  in  reserve  some  supreme  assertion  of  its 
identity.  It  was  honest,  verily,  just  by  reason  of  the  pos 
sibility.  It  was  poor  and  unsuccessful  because  here  it 
was  just  on  the  verge  of  quarrelling  with  its  bread  and 
butter.  Salvation  would  be  of  course — the  salvation 
of  the  showman — rigidly  to  keep  it  on  the  verge;  not  to 
let  it,  in  other  words,  overpass  by  an  inch.  He  might 
count  on  this,  he  said  to  himself,  if  there  weren't  any 
public — if  there  weren't  thousands  of  people  demand 
ing  of  him  what  he  was  paid  for.  He  saw  the  approach 
of  the  stage  at  which  they  would  affect  him,  the  thou 
sands  of  people — and  perhaps  even  more  the  earnest 
individual — as  coming  really  to  see  if  he  were  earning 
his  wage.  Wouldn't  he  soon  begin  to  fancy  them  in 
league  with  the  Body,  practically  deputed  by  it — given, 
no  doubt,  a  kindled  suspicion — to  look  in  and  report 
observations?  It  was  the  way  he  broke  down  with  the 
lonely  pilgrim  that  led  to  his  first  heart-searchings — 
broke  down  as  to  the  courage  required  for  damping  an 

269 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

uncritical  faith.  What  they  all  most  wanted  was  to 
feel  that  everything  was  "  just  as  it  was";  only  the 
shock  of  having  to  part  with  that  vision  was  greater 
than  any  individual  could  bear  unsupported.  The  bad 
moments  were  upstairs  in  the  Birthroom,  for  here  the 
forces  pressing  on  the  very  edge  assumed  a  dire  in 
tensity.  The  mere  expression  of  eye,  all-credulous, 
omnivorous  and  fairly  moistening  in  the  act,  with 
which  many  persons  gazed  about  might  eventually 
make  it  difficult  for  him  to  remain  fairly  civil.  Often 
they  came  in  pairs — sometimes  one  had  come  before — 
and  then  they  explained  to  each  other.  He  never 
in  that  case  corrected;  he  listened,  for  the  lesson  of 
listening:  after  which  he  would  remark  to  his  wife  that 
there  was  no  end  to  what  he  was  learning.  He  saw 
that  if  he  should  really  ever  break  down  it  would  be 
with  her  he  would  begin.  He  had  given  her  hints  and 
digs  enough,  but  she  was  so  inflamed  with  appreciation 
that  she  either  didn't  feel  them  or  pretended  not  to 
understand. 

This  was  the  greater  complication  that,  with  the  re 
turn  of  the  spring  and  the  increase  of  the  public,  her 
services  were  more  required.  She  took  the  field  with 
him,  from  an  early  hour ;  she  was  present  with  the  party 
above  while  he  kept  an  eye,  and  still  more  an  ear,  on  the 
party  below ;  and  how  could  he  know,  he  asked  himself, 
what  she  might  say  to  them  and  what  she  might  suffer 
Them  to  say — or  in  other  words,  poor  wretches,  to  be 
lieve — while  removed  from  his  control  ?  Some  day  or 
other,  and  before  too  long,  he  couldn't  but  think,  he 
must  have  the  matter  out  with  her — the  matter,  name 
ly,  of  the  morality  of  their  position.  The  morality  of 
women  was  special — he  was  getting  lights  on  that. 
Isabel's  conception  of  her  office  was  to  cherish  and  en 
rich  the  legend.  It  was  already,  the  legend,  very  tak 
ing,  but  what  was  she  there  for  but  to  make  it  more  so  ? 
She  certainly  wasn't  there  to  chill  any  natural  piety. 

270 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

If  it  was  all  in  the  air — all  in  their  "eye,"  as  the  vulgar 
might  say — that  He  had  been  born  in  the  Birthroom, 
where  was  the  value  of  the  sixpences  they  took  ?  where 
the  equivalent  they  had  engaged  to  supply?  "Oh  dear, 
yes — just  about  here;"  and  she  must  tap  the  place  with 
her  foot.  "Altered?  Oh  dear,  no — save  in  a  few 
trifling  particulars;  you  see  the  place — and  isn't  that 
just  the  charm  of  it  ? — quite  as  He  saw  it.  Very  poor 
and  homely,  no  doubt ;  but  that's  just  what's  so  wonder 
ful."  He  didn't  want  to  hear  her,  and  yet  he  didn't 
want  to  give  her  her  head ;  he  didn't  want  to  make  dif 
ficulties  or  to  snatch  the  bread  from  her  mouth.  But 
he  must  none  the  less  give  her  a  warning  before  they 
had  gone  too  far.  That  was  the  way,  one  evening  in 
June,  he  put  it  to  her;  the  affluence,  with  the  finest 
weather,  having  lately  been  of  the  largest,  and  the 
crowd,  all  day,  fairly  gorged  with  the  story.  "We 
mustn't,  you  know,  go  too  far." 

The  odd  thing  was  that  she  had  now  ceased  to  be 
even  conscious  of  what  troubled  him — she  was  so 
launched  in  her  own  career.  "Too  far  for  what  ?" 

"To  save  our  immortal  souls.  We  mustn't,  love,  tell 
too  many  lies." 

She  looked  at  him  with  dire  reproach.  "Ah  now, 
are  you  going  to  begin  again  ?" 

"I  never  have  begun ;  I  haven't  wanted  to  worry  you. 
But,  you  know,  we  don't  know  anything  about  it." 
And  then  as  she  stared,  flushing :  "About  His  having 
been  born  up  there.  About  anything,  really.  Not  the 
least  little  scrap  that  would  weigh,  in  any  other  connec 
tion,  as  evidence.  So  don't  rub  it  in  so." 

"Rub  it  in  how?" 

"That  He  was  born "  But  at  sight  of  her  face 

he  only  sighed.  "Oh  dear,  oh  dear !" 

"Don't  you  think,"  she  replied  cuttingly,  "that  He 
was  born  anywhere  ?" 

He  hesitated — it  was  such  an  edifice  to  shake.  "Well, 
271 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

we  don't  know.  There's  very  little  to  know.  He  cov 
ered  His  tracks  as  no  other  human  being  has  ever 
done." 

She  was  still  in  her  public  costume  and  had  not  taken 
off  the  gloves  that  she  made  a  point  of  wearing  as  a  part 
of  that  uniform;  she  remembered  how  the  rustling 
housekeeper  in  the  Border  castle,  on  whom  she  had  be 
gun  by  modelling  herself,  had  worn  them.  She  seemed 
official  and  slightly  distant.  "To  cover  His  tracks.  He 
must  have  had  to  exist.  Have  we  got  to  give  that  up  ?" 

"No,  I  don't  ask  you  to  give  it  up  yet.  But  there's 
very  little  to  go  upon." 

"And  is  that  what  I'm  to  tell  Them  in  return  for 
everything?" 

Gedge  waited — he  walked  about.  The  place  was 
doubly  still  after  the  bustle  of  the  day,  and  the  summer 
evening  rested  on  it  as  a  blessing,  making  it,  in  its  small 
state  and  ancientry,  mellow  and  sweet.  It  was  good  to 
be  there,  and  it  would  be  good  to  stay.  At  the  same 
time  there  was  something  incalculable  in  the  effect  on 
one's  nerves  of  the  great  gregarious  density.  That  was 
an  attitude  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  degrees  and 
shades,  the  attitude  of  wanting  all  or  nothing.  And 
you  couldn't  talk  things  over  with  it.  You  could  only 
do  this  with  friends,  and  then  but  in  cases  where  you 
were  sure  the  friends  wouldn't  betray  you.  "Couldn't 
you  adopt,"  he  replied  at  last,  "a  slightly  more  discreet 
method?  What  we  can  say  is  that  things  have  been 
said;  that's  all  we  have  to  do  with.  'And  is  this  really' 
— when  they  jam  their  umbrellas  into  the  floor — 'the 
very  spot  where  He  was  born?'  'So  it  has,  from  a 
long  time  back,  been  described  as  being.'  Couldn't  one 
meet  Them,  to  be  decent  a  little,  in  some  such  way  as 
that?" 

She  looked  at  him  very  hard.  "Is  that  the  way  you 
meet  them?" 

"No;  I've  kept  on  lying — without  scruple,  without 
shame." 

272 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

"Then  why  do  you  haul  me  up  ?" 

"Because  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  we  might,  like  true 
companions,  work  it  out  a  little  together." 

This  was  not  strong,  he  felt,  as,  pausing  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets,  he  stood  before  her ;  and  he  knew 
it  as  weaker  still  after  she  had  looked  at  him  a  minute. 
"Morris  Gedge,  I  propose  to  be  your  true  companion, 
and  I've  come  here  to  stay.  That's  all  I've  got  to  say." 
It  was  not,  however,  for  "You  had  better  try  yourself 
and  see,"  she  presently  added.  "Give  the  place,  give 
the  story  away,  by  so  much  as  a  look,  and — well,  I'd 
allow  you  about  nine  days.  Then  you'd  see." 

He  feigned,  to  gain  time,  an  innocence.  "They'd 
take  it  so  ill  ?"  And  then,  as  she  said  nothing :  "They'd 
turn  and  rend  me  ?  They'd  tear  me  to  pieces  ?" 

But  she  wouldn't  make  a  joke  of  it.  "They  wouldn't 
have  it,  simply." 

"No— they  wouldn't.  That's  what  I  say.  They 
won't." 

"You  had  better,"  she  went  on,  "begin  with  Grant- 
Ja-ckson.  But  even  that  isn't  necessary.  It  would  get 
to  him,  it  would  get  to  the  Body,  like  wildfire." 

"I  see,"  said  poor  Gedge.  And  indeed  for  the  mo 
ment  he  did  see,  while  his  companion  followed  up  what 
she  believed  her  advantage. 

"  Do  you  consider  it's  all  a  fraud?  " 

"Well,  I  grant  you  there  was  somebody.  But. the 
details  are  naught.  The  links  are  missing.  The  evi 
dence — in  particular  about  that  room  upstairs,  in  itself 
our  Casa  Santa — is  nil.  It  was  so  awfully  long  ago." 
Which  he  knew  again  sounded  weak. 

"Of  course  it  was  awfully  long  ago — that's  just  the 
beauty  and  the  interest.  Tell  Them,  tell  Them,"  she 
continued,  "that  the  evidence  is  nil,  and  I'll  tell  them 
something  else."  She  spoke  it  with  such  meaning  that 
his  face  seemed  to  show  a  question,  to  which  she  was 
on  the  spot  of  replying  "I'll  tell  them  that  you're  a " 

273 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

She  stopped,  however,  changing  it.  "  I'll  tell  them 
exactly  the  opposite.  And  I'll  find  out  what  you  say 
— it  won't  take  long — to  do  it.  If  we  tell  different 
stories,  that  possibly  may  save  us." 

"I  see  what  you  mean.  It  would  perhaps,  as  an  odd 
ity,  have  a  success  of  curiosity.  It  might  become  a 
draw.  Still,  they  but  want  broad  masses."  And  he 
looked  at  her  sadly.  "You're  no  more  than  one  of 
Them." 

"If  it's  being  no  more  than  one  of  them  to  love  it," 
she  answered,  "then  I  certainly  am.  And  I  am  not 
ashamed  of  my  company." 

"To  love  what?"  said  Morris  Gedge. 

"To  love  to  think  He  was  born  there." 

"You  think  too  much.  It's  bad  for  you."  He 
turned  away  with  his  chronic  moan.  But  it  was  with 
out  losing  what  she  called  after  him. 

"I  decline  to  let  the  place  down."  And  what  was 
there  indeed  to  say  ?  They  were  there  to  keep  it  up. 

V 

HE  kept  it  up  through  the  summer,  but  with  the  queer 
est  consciousness,  at  times,  of  the  want  of  proportion 
between  his  secret  rage  and  the  spirit  of  those  from 
whom  the  friction  came.  He  said  to  himself — so  sore 
as  his  sensibility  had  grown — that  They  were  gregari 
ously  ferocious  at  the  very  time  he  was  seeing  Them 
as  individually  mild.  He  said  to  himself  that  They 
•were  mild  only  because  he  was — he  flattered  himself 
that  he  was  divinely  so,  considering  what  he  might  be ; 
and  that  he  should,  as  his  wife  had  warned  him,  soon 
enough  have  news  of  it  were  he  to  deflect  by  a  hair's 
breath  from  the  line  traced  for  him.  That  was  the  col 
lective  fatuity — that  it  was  capable  of  turning,  on  the 
instant,  both  to  a  general  and  to  a  particular  resentment. 
Since  the  least  breath  of  discrimination  would  get  him 

274 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

the  sack  without  mercy,  it  was  absurd,  he  reflected,  to 
speak  of  his  discomfort  as  light.  He  was  gagged,  he 
was  goaded,  as  in  omnivorous  companies  he  doubtless 
sometimes  showed  by  a  strange  silent  glare.  They 
would  get  him  the  sack  for  that  as  well,  if  he  didn't 
look  out ;  therefore  wasn't  it  in  effect  ferocity  when  you 
mightn't  even  hold  your  tongue?  They  wouldn't  let 
you  off  with  silence — They  insisted  on  your  committing 
yourself.  It  was  the  pound  of  flesh — They  would  have 
it;  so  under  his  coat  he  bled.  But  a  wondrous  peace, 
by  exception,  dropped  on  him  one  afternoon  at  the  end 
of  August.  The  pressure  had,  as  usual,  been  high,  but 
it  had  diminished  with  the  fall  of  day,  and  the  place 
was  empty  before  the  hour  for  closing.  Then  it  was 
that,  within  a  few  minutes  of  this  hour,  there  presented 
themselves  a  pair  of  pilgrims  to  whom  in  the  ordinary 
course  he  would  have  remarked  that  they  were,  to  his 
regret,  too  late.  He  was  to  wonder  afterwards  why 
the  course  had,  at  sight  of  the  visitors — a  gentleman 
and  a  lady,  appealing  and  fairly  young — shown  for 
him  as  other  than  ordinary;  the  consequence  sprang 
doubtless  from  something  rather  fine  and  unnameable, 
something,  for  instance,  in  the  tone  of  the  young  man, 
or  in  the  light  of  his  eye,  after  hearing  the  statement  on 
the  subject  of  the  hour.  "Yes,  we  know  it's  late;  but 
it's  just,  I'm  afraid,  because  of  that.  We've  had  rather 
a  notion  of  escaping  the  crowd — as,  I  suppose,  you 
mostly  have  one  now ;  and  it  was  really  on  the  chance  of 

finding  you  alone !" 

These  things  the  young  man  said  before  being  quite 
admitted,  and  they  were  words  that  any  one  might  have 
spoken  who  had  not  taken  the  trouble  to  be  punctual 
or  who  desired,  a  little  ingratiatingly,  to  force  the  door. 
Gedge  even  guessed  at  the  sense  that  might  lurk  in 
them,  the  hint  of  a  special  tip  if  the  point  were  stretched. 
There  were  no  tips,  he  had  often  thanked  his  stars,  at 
the  Birthplace ;  there  was  the  charged  fee  and  nothing 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

more ;  everything  else  was  out  of  order,  to  the  relief  of 
a  palm  not  formed  by  nature  for  a  scoop.  Yet  in  spite 
of  everything,  in  spite  especially  of  the  almost  audible 
chink  of  the  gentleman's  sovereigns,  which  might  in 
another  case  exactly  have  put  him  out,  he  presently 
found  himself,  in  the  Birthroom,  access  to  which  he  had 
gracefully  enough  granted,  almost  treating  the  visit  as 
personal  and  private.  The  reason — well,  the  reason 
would  have  been,  if  anywhere,  in  something  naturally 
persuasive  on  the  part  of  the  couple,  unless  it  had  been, 
rather,  again,  in  the  way  the  young  man,  once  he  was 
in  the  place,  met  the  caretaker's  expression  of  face,  held 
it  a  moment  and  seemed  to  wrish  to  sound  it.  That  they 
were  Americans  was  promptly  clear,  and  Gedge  could 
very  nearly  have  told  what  kind ;  he  had  arrived  at  the 
point  of  distinguishing  kinds,  though  the  difficulty 
might  have  been  with  him  now  that  the  case  before  him 
was  rare.  He  saw  it,  in  fact,  suddenly,  in  the  light  of 
the  golden  midland  evening,  which  reached  them 
through  low  old  windows,  saw  it  with  a  rush  of  feeling, 
unexpected  and  smothered,  that  made  him  wish  for  a 
moment  to  keep  it  before  him  as  a  case  of  inordinate 
happiness.  It  made  him  feel  old,  shabby,  poor,  but  he 
watched  it  no  less  intensely  for  its  doing  so.  They  were 
children  of  fortune,  of  the  greatest,  as  it  might  seem  to 
Morris  Gedge,  and  they  were  of  course  lately  married ; 
the  husband,  smooth-faced  and  soft,  but  resolute  and 
fine,  several  years  older  than  the  wife,  and  the  wife 
vaguely,  delicately,  irregularly,  but  mercilessly  pretty. 
Somehow,  the  world  was  theirs;  they  gave  the  person 
who  took  the  sixpences  at  the  Birthplace  such  a  sense  of 
the  high  luxury  of  freedom  as  he  had  never  had.  The 
thing  was  that  the  world  was  theirs  not  simply  because 
they  had  money — he  had  seen  rich  people  enough — but 
because  they  could  in  a  supreme  degree  think  and  feel 
and  say  what  they  liked.  They  had  a  nature  and  a  cult 
ure,  a  tradition,  a  facility  of  some  sort — and  all  pro- 

276 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

ducing  in  them  an  effect  of  positive  beauty — that  gave  a 
light  to  their  liberty  and  an  ease  to  their  tone.  These 
things  moreover  suffered  nothing  from  the  fact  that 
they  happened  to  be  in  mourning;  this  was  probably 
worn  for  some  lately-deceased  opulent  father,  or  some 
delicate  mother  who  would  be  sure  to  have  been  a  part 
of  the  source  of  the  beauty,  and  it  affected  Gedge,  in 
the  gathered  twilight  and  at  his  odd  crisis,  as  the  very 
uniform  of  their  distinction. 

He  couldn't  quite  have  said  afterwards  by  what  steps 
the  point  had  been  reached,  but  it  had  become  at  the  end 
of  five  minutes  a  part  of  their  presence  in  the  Birth- 
room,  a  part  of  the  young  man's  look,  a  part  of  the 
charm  of  the  moment,  and  a  part,  above  all,  of  a  strange 
sense  within  him  of  "Now  or  never!"  that  Gedge  had 
suddenly,  thrillingly,  let  himself  go.  He  had  not  been 
definitely  conscious  of  drifting  to  it;  he  had  been,  for 
that,  too  conscious  merely  of  thinking  how  different,  in 
all  their  range,  were  such  a  united  couple  from  another 
united  couple  that  he  knew.  They  were  everything  he 
and  his  wife  were  not;  this  was  more  than  anything 
else  the  lesson  at  first  of  their  talk.  Thousands  of 
couples  of  whom  the  same  was  true  certainly  had  passed 
before  him,  but  none  of  whom  it  was  true  with  just  that 
engaging  intensity.  This  was  because  of  their  tran 
scendent  freedom;  that  was  what,  at  the  end  of  five 
minutes,  he  saw  it  all  come  back  to.  The  husband  had 
been  there  at  some  earlier  time,  and  he  had  his  impres 
sion,  which  he  wished  now  to  make  his  wife  share. 
But  he  already,  Gedge  could  see,  had  not  concealed  it 
from  her.  A  pleasant  irony,  in  fine,  our  friend  seemed 
to  taste  in  the  air — he  who  had  not  yet  felt  free  to  taste 
his  own. 

"I  think  you  weren't  here  four  years  ago" — that  was 
what  the  young  man  had  almost  begun  by  remarking. 
Gedge  liked  his  remembering  it,  liked  his  frankly 
speaking  to  him;  all  the  more  that  he  had  given  him, 

277 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

as  it  were,  no  opening.  He  had  let  them  look  about  be 
low,  and  then  had  taken  them  up,  but  without  words, 
without  the  usual  showman's  song,  of  which  he  would 
have  been  afraid.  The  visitors  didn't  ask  for  it;  the 
young  man  had  taken  the  matter  out  of  his  hands  by 
himself  dropping  for  the  benefit  of  the  young  woman  a 
few  detached  remarks.  What  Gedge  felt,  oddly,  was 
that  these  remarks  were  not  inconsiderate  of  him;  he 
had  heard  others,  both  of  the  priggish  order  and  the 
crude,  that  might  have  been  called  so.  And  as  the 
young  man  had  not  been  aided  to  this  cognition  of  him 
as  new,  it  already  began  to  make  for  them  a  certain 
common  ground.  The  ground  became  immense  when 
the  visitor  presently  added  with  a  smile :  "There  was 
a  good  lady,  I  recollect,  who  had  a  great  deal  to  say." 

It  was  the  gentleman's  smile  that  had  done  it;  the 
irony  was  there.  "Ah,  there  has  been  a  great  deal 
said."  And  Gedge's  look  at  his  interlocutor  doubtless 
showed  his  sense  of  being  sounded.  It  was  extraordi 
nary  of  course  that  a  perfect  stranger  should  have 
guessed  the  travail  of  his  spirit,  should  have  caught  the 
gleam  of  his  inner  commentary.  That  probably,  in 
spite  of  him,  leaked  out  of  his  poor  old  eyes.  "Much 
of  it,  in  such  places  as  this,"  he  heard  himself  adding, 
"  is  of  course  said  very  irresponsibly."  Such  places 
as  this! — he  winced  at  the  words  as  soon  as  he  had  ut 
tered  them. 

There  was  no  wincing,  however,  on  the  part  of  his 
pleasant  companions.  "Exactly  so;  the  whole  thing 
becomes  a  sort  of  stiff,  smug  convention,  like  a  dressed- 
up  sacred  doll  in  a  Spanish  church — which  you're  a 
monster  if  you  touch." 

"A  monster,"  said  Gedge,  meeting  his  eyes. 

The  young  man  smiled,  but  he  thought  he  looked  at 
him  a  little  harder.  "A  blasphemer." 

"A  blasphemer." 

It  seemed  to  do  his  visitor  good — he  certainly  was 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

looking  at  him  harder.     Detached  as  he  was  he  was  in 
terested — he  was  at  least  amused.     "Then  you  don't 

claim,  or  at  any  rate  you  don't  insist ?     I  mean  you 

personally." 

He  had  an  identity  for  him,  Gedge  felt,  that  he 
couldn't  have  had  for  a  Briton,  and  the  impulse  was 
quick  in  our  friend  to  testify  to  this  perception.  "  I 
don't  insist  to  you" 

The  young  man  laughed.  "It  really — I  assure  you 
if  I  may — wouldn't  do  any  good.  I'm  too  awfully  in 
terested." 

"Do  you  mean,"  his  wife  lightly  inquired,  "in — a — 
pulling  it  down?  That  is  in  what  you've  said  to  me." 

"Has  he  said  to  you,"  Gedge  intervened,  though 
quaking  a  little,  "that  he  would  like  to  pull  it  down?" 

She  met,  in  her  free  sweetness,  this  directness  with 
such  a  charm !  "Oh,  perhaps  not  quite  the  house /" 

"Good.     You  see  we  live  on  it — I  mean  we  people." 

The  husband  had  laughed,  but  had  now  so  complete 
ly  ceased  to  look  about  him  that  there  seemed  nothing 
left  for  him  but  to  talk  avowedly  with  the  caretaker. 
"I'm  interested,"  he  explained,  "in  what,  I  think,  is  the 
interesting  thing — or  at  all  events  the  eternally  tor 
menting  one.  The  fact  of  the  abysmally  little  that,  in 
proportion,  we  know." 

"In  proportion  to  what?"  his  companion  asked. 

"Well,  to  what  there  must  have  been — to  what  in 
fact  there  is — to  wonder  about.  That's  the  interest ;  it's 
immense.  He  escapes  us  like  a  thief  at  night,  carrying 
off — well,  carrying  off  everything.  And  people  pre 
tend  to  catch  Him  like  a  flown  canary,  over  whom  you 
can  close  your  hand  and  put  Him  back.  He  won't  go 
back ;  he  won't  come  back.  He's  not" — the  young  man 
laughed — "such  a  fool !  It  makes  Him  the  happiest 
of  all  great  men." 

He  had  begun  by  speaking  to  his  wife,  but  had  ended, 
with  his  friendly,  his  easy,  his  indescribable  competence, 

279 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

for  Gedge — poor  Gedge  who  quite  held  his  breath  and 
who  felt,  in  the  most  unexpected  way,  that  he  had 
somehow  never  been  in  such  good  society.  The  young 
wife,  who  for  herself  meanwhile  had  continued  to  look 
about,  sighed  out,  smiled  out — Gedge  couldn't  have 
told  which — her  little  answer  to  these  remarks.  "It's 
rather  a  pity,  you  know,  that  He  isn't  here.  I  mean  as 
Goethe's  at  Weimar.  For  Goethe  is  at  Weimar." 

"Yes,  my  dear;  that's  Goethe's  bad  luck.  There  he 
sticks.  This  man  isn't  anywhere.  I  defy  you  to  catch 
Him." 

"Why  not  say,  beautifully,"  the  young  woman 
laughed,  "that,  like  the  wind,  He's  everywhere?" 

It  wasn't  of  course  the  tone  of  discussion,  it  was  the 
tone  of  joking,  though  of  better  joking,  Gedge  seemed 
to  feel,  and  more  within  his  own  appreciation,  than  he 
had  ever  listened  to;  and  this  was  precisely  why  the 
young  man  could  go  on  without  the  effect  of  irritation, 
answering  his  wife  but  still  with  eyes  for  their  com 
panion.  "I'll  be  hanged  if  He's  here!" 

It  was  almost  as  if  he  were  taken — that  is,  struck 
and  rather  held — by  their  companion's  unruffled  state, 
which  they  hadn't  meant  to  ruffle,  but  which  suddenly 
presented  its  interest,  perhaps  even  projected  its  light. 
The  gentleman  didn't  know,  Gedge  was  afterwards  to 
say  to  himself,  how  that  hypocrite  was  inwardly  all  of  a 
tremble,  how  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  fate  was  being 
literally  pulled  down  on  his  head.  He  was  trembling 
for  the  moment  certainly  too  much  to  speak ;  abject  he 
might  be,  but  he  didn't  want  his  voice  to  have  the  ab 
surdity  of  a  quaver.  And  the  young  woman — charm 
ing  creature ! — still  had  another  word.  It  was  for  the 
guardian  of  the  spot,  and  she  made  it,  in  her  way,  de 
lightful.  They  had  remained  in  the  Holy  of  Holies, 
and  she  had  been  looking  for  a  minute,  with  a  rueful 
ness  just  marked  enough  to  be  pretty,  at  the  queer  old 
floor.  "Then  if  you  say  it  wasn't  in  this  room  He  was 
born — well,  what's  the  use  ?" 

280 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

"What's  the  use  of  what?"  her  husband  asked.  "The 
use,  you  mean,  of  our  coming  here?  Why,  the  place 
is  charming  in  itself.  And  it's  also  interesting,"  he 
added  to  Gedge,  "to  know  how  you  get  on." 

Gedge  looked  at  him  a  moment  in  silence,  but  he 
answered  the  young  woman  first.  If  poor  Isabel,  he 
was  thinking,  could  only  have  been  like  that! — not  as 
to  youth,  beauty,  arrangement  of  hair  or  picturesque 
grace  of  hat — these  things  he  didn't  mind;  but  as  to 
sympathy,  facility,  light  perceptive,  and  yet  not  cheap, 
detachment !  "I  don't  say  it  wasn't — but  I  don't  say  it 
was." 

"Ah,  but  doesn't  that,"  she  returned,  "come  very 
much  to  the  same  thing?  And  don't  They  want  also 
to  see  where  He  had  His  dinner  and  where  He  had  His 
tea?" 

"They  want  everything,"  said  Morris  Gedge.  "They 
want  to  see  where  He  hung  up  His  hat  and  where  He 
kept  His  boots  and  where  His  mother  boiled  her  pot." 

"But  if  you  don't  show  them ?" 

"They  show  me.     It's  in  all  their  little  books." 

"You  mean,"  the  husband  asked,  "that  you've  only 
to  hold  your  tongue?" 

"I  try  to,"  said  Gedge. 

"Well,"  his  visitor  smiled,  "I  see  you  can." 

Gedge  hesitated.     "I  can't." 

"Oh,  well,"  said  his  friend,  "what  does  it  matter?" 

"I  do  speak,"  he  continued.  "  I  can't  sometimes 
not." 

"Then  how  do  you  get  on  ?" 

Gedge  looked  at  him  more  abjectly,  to  his  own  sense, 
than  he  had  ever  looked  at  anyone — even  at  Isabel  when 
she  frightened  him.  "I  don't  get  on.  I  speak,"  he 
said,  "since  I've  spoken  to  you." 

"Oh,  we  sha'n't  hurt  you !  "  the  young  man  reassur 
ingly  laughed. 

The  twilight  meanwhile  had  sensibly  thickened ;  the 
281 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

end  of  the  visit  was  indicated.  They  turned  together 
out  of  the  upper  room,  and  came  down  the  narrow  stair. 
The  words  just  exchanged  might  have  been  felt  as  pro 
ducing  an  awkwardness  which  the  young  woman  grace 
fully  felt  the  impulse  to  dissipate.  "You  must  rather 
wonder  why  we've  come."  And  it  was  the  first  note, 
for  Gedge,  of  a  further  awkwardness — as  if  he  had 
definitely  heard  it  make  the  husband's  hand,  in  a  full 
pocket,  begin  to  fumble. 

It  was  even  a  little  awkwardly  that  the  husband  still 
held  off.  "Oh,  we  like  it  as  it  is.  There's  always 
something."  With  which  they  had  approached  the 
door  of  egress. 

"What  is  there,  please?"  asked  Morris  Gedge,  not  yet 
opening  the  door,  as  he  would  fain  have  kept  the  pair 
on,  and  conscious  only  for  a  moment  after  he  had 
spoken  that  his  question  was  just  having,  for  the  young 
man,  too  dreadfully  wrong  a  sound.  This  personage 
wondered,  yet  feared,  had  evidently  for  some  minutes 
been  asking  himself ;  so  that,  with  his  preoccupation,  the 
caretaker's  words  had  represented  to  him,  inevitably, 
"What  is  there,  please,  for  me?"  Gedge  already  knew, 
with  it,  moreover,  that  he  wasn't  stopping  him  in  time. 
He  had  put  his  question,  to  show  he  himself  wasn't 
afraid,  and  he  must  have  had  in  consequence,  he  was 
subsequently  to  reflect,  a  lamentable  air  of  waiting. 

The  visitor's  hand  came  out.  "I  hope  I  may  take  the 

liberty ?"  What  afterwards  happened  our  friend 

scarcely  knew,  for  it  fell  into  a  slight  confusion,  the  con 
fusion  of  a  queer  gleam  of  gold — a  sovereign  fairly 
thrust  at  him ;  of  a  quick,  almost  violent  motion  on  his 
own  part,  which,  to  make  the  matter  worse,  might  well 
have  sent  the  money  rolling  on  the  floor;  and  then  of 
marked  blushes  all  round,  and  a  sensible  embarrass 
ment  ;  producing  indeed,  in  turn,  rather  oddly,  and  ever 
so  quickly,  an  increase  of  communion.  It  was  as  if  the 
young  man  had  offered  him  money  to  make  up  to  him 

282 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

for  having,  as  it  were,  led  him  on,  and  then,  perceiving 
the  mistake,  but  liking  him  the  better  for  his  refusal, 
had  wanted  to  obliterate  this  aggravation  of  his  orig 
inal  wrong.  He  had  done  so,  presently,  while  Gedge 
got  the  door  open,  by  saying  the  best  thing  he  could, 
and  by  saying  it  frankly  and  gaily.  "Luckily  it  doesn't 
at  all  affect  the  work!" 

The  small  town-street,  quiet  and  empty  in  the  sum 
mer  eventide,  stretched  to  right  and  left,  with  a  gabled 
and  timbered  house  or  two,  and  fairly  seemed  to  have 
cleared  itself  to  congruity  with  the  historic  void  over 
which  our  friends,  lingering  an  instant  to  converse, 
looked  at  each  other.  The  young  wife,  rather,  looked 
about  a  moment  at  all  there  wasn't  to  be  seen,  and  then, 
before  Gedge  had  found  a  reply  to  her  husband's  re 
mark,  uttered,  evidently  in  the  interest  of  conciliation,  a 
little  question  of  her  own  that  she  tried  to  make  earnest. 
"It's  our  unfortunate  ignorance,  you  mean,  that 
doesn't?" 

"Unfortunate  or  fortunate.  I  like  it  so,"  said  the 
husband.  "  'The  play's  the  thing.'  Let  the  author 
alone." 

Gedge,  with  his  key  on  his  forefinger,  leaned  against 
the  door-post,  took  in  the  stupid  little  street,  and  was 
sorry  to  see  them  go — they  seemed  so  to  abandon  him. 
"That's  just  what  They  won't  do — not  let  me  do.  It's 
all  I  want — to  let  the  author  alone.  Practically" — he 
felt  himself  getting  the  last  of  his  chance — "there  is 
no  author;  that  is  for  us  to  deal  with.  There  are  all 
the  immortal  people — in  the  work;  but  there's  nobody 
else." 

"Yes,"  said  the  young  man — "that's  what  it  comes 
to.  There  should  really,  to  clear  the  matter  up,  be  no 
such  Person." 

"As  you  say,"  Gedge  returned,  "it's  what  it  comes  to. 
There  is  no  such  Person." 

The  evening  air  listened,  in  the  warm,  thick  midland 

283 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

stillness,  while  the  wife's  little  cry  rang  out.     "But 
wasn't  there ?" 

"There  was  somebody,"    said  Gedge,    against    the 
doorpost.     "But  They've  killed  Him.     And,  dead  as 
He  is,  They  keep  it  up,  They  do  it  over  again,  They  ki 
Him  every  day." 

He  was  aware  of  saying  this  so  grimly — more  grim 
ly  than  he  wished — that  his  companions  exchanged  a 
glance  and  even  perhaps  looked  as  if  they  felt  him  ex 
travagant.  That  was  the  way,  really,  Isabel  had 
warned  him  all  the  others  would  be  looking  if  he  should 
talk  to  Them  as  he  talked  to  her.  He  liked,  however, 
for  that  matter,  to  hear  how  he  should  sound  when  pro 
nounced  incapable  through  deterioration  of  the  brain. 
"Then  if  there's  no  author,  if  there's  nothing  to  be  said 
but  that  there  isn't  anybody,"  the  young  woman  smil 
ingly  asked,  "why  in  the  world  should  there  be  a 
house?" 

"There  shouldn't,"  said  Morris  Gedge. 

Decidedly,  yes,  he  affected  the  young  man.  "Oh,  I 
don't  say,  mind  you,  that  you  should  pull  it  down !" 

"Then  where  would  you  go?"  their  companion 
sweetly  inquired. 

"That's  what  my  wife  asks,"  Gedge  replied. 

"Then  keep  it  up,  keep  it  up!"  And  the  husband 
held  out  his  hand. 

"That's  what  my  wife  says,"  Gedge  went  on  as  he 
shook  it. 

The  young  woman,  charming  creature,  emulated  the 
other  visitor;  she  offered  their  remarkable  friend  her 
handshake.  "Then  mind  your  wife." 

The  poor  man  faced  her  gravely.  "I  would  if  she 
were  such  a  wife  as  you !" 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 


VI 

IT  had  made  for  him,  all  the  same,  an  immense  differ 
ence;  it  had  given  him  an  extraordinary  lift,  so  that  a 
certain  sweet  after-taste  of  his  freedom  might,  a  couple 
of  months  later,  have  been  suspected  of  aiding  to  pro 
duce  for  him  another,  and  really  a  more  considerable, 
adventure.  It  was  an  odd  way  to  think  of  it,  but  he 
had  been,  to  his  imagination,  for  twenty  minutes  in 
good  society — that  being  the  term  that  best  described 
for  him  the  company  of  people  to  whom  he  hadn't  to 
talk,  as  he  further  phrased  it,  rot.  It  was  his  title  to 
society  that  he  had,  in  his  doubtless  awkward  way,  af 
firmed;  and  the  difficulty  was  just  that,  having  affirmed 
it,  he  couldn't  take  back  the  affirmation.  Few  things 
had  happened  to  him  in  life,  that  is  few  that  were  agree 
able,  but  at  least  this  had,  and  he  wasn't  so  constructed 
that  he  could  go  on  as  if  it  hadn't.  It  was  going  on  as 
if  it  had,  however,  that  landed  him,  alas!  in  the  situa 
tion  unmistakeably  marked  by  a  visit  from  Grant- Jack 
son,  late  one  afternoon  toward  the  end  of  October.  This 
had  been  the  hour  of  the  call  of  the  young  Americans. 
Every  day  that  hour  had  come  round  something  of 
the  deep  throb  of  it,  the  successful  secret,  woke  up ;  but 
the  two  occasions  were,  of  a  truth,  related  only  by  being 
so  intensely  opposed.  The  secret  had  been  successful 
in  that  he  had  said  nothing  of  it  to  Isabel,  who,  occu 
pied  in  their  own  quarter  while  the  incident  lasted,  had 
neither  heard  the  visitors  arrive  nor  seen  them  depart. 
It  was  on  the  other  hand  scarcely  successful  in  guarding 
itself  from  indirect  betrayals.  There  were  two  persons 
in  the  world,  at  least,  who  felt  as  he  did ;  they  were  per 
sons,  also,  who  had  treated  him,  benignly,  as  feeling  as 
they  did,  who  had  been  ready  in  fact  to  overflow  in  gifts 
as  a  sign  of  it,  and  though  they  were  now  off  in  space 
they  were  still  with  him  sufficiently  in  spirit  to  make 

285 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

him  play,  as  it  were,  with  the  sense  of  their  sympathy. 
This  in  turn  made  him,  as  he  was  perfectly  aware,  more 
than  a  shade  or  two  reckless,  so  that,  in  his  reaction 
from  that  gluttony  of  the  public  for  false  facts  which 
had  from  the  first  tormented  him,  he  fell  into  the  habit 
of  sailing,  as  he  would  have  said,  too  near  the  wind,  or 
in  other  words — all  in  presence  of  the  people — of  wash 
ing  his  hands  of  the  legend.  He  had  crossed  the  line — 
he  knew  it ;  he  had  struck  wild — They  drove  him  to  it ; 
he  had  substituted,  by  a  succession  of  uncontrollable  pro 
fanities,  an  attitude  that  couldn't  be  understood  for  an 
attitude  that  but  too  evidently  had  been. 

This  was  of  course  the  franker  line,  only  he  hadn't 
taken  it,  alas !  for  frankness — hadn't  in  the  least,  really, 
taken  it,  but  had  been  simply  himself  caught  up  and  dis 
posed  of  by  it,  hurled  by  his  fate  against  the  bedizened 
walls  of  the  temple,  quite  in  the  way  of  a  priest  pos 
sessed  to  excess  of  the  god,  or,  more  vulgarly,  that  of  a 
blind  bull  in  a  china-shop — an  animal  to  which  he  often 
compared  himself.  He  had  let  himself  fatally  go,  in 
fine,  just  for  irritation,  for  rage,  having,  in  his  predica 
ment,  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  frankness — a  luxury  re 
served  for  quite  other  situations.  It  had  always  been 
his  sentiment  that  one  lived  to  learn;  he  had  learned 
something  every  hour  of  his  life,  though  people 
mostly  never  knew  what,  in  spite  of  its  having  generally 
been — hadn't  it? — at  somebody's  expense.  What  he 
was  at  present  continually  learning  was  the  sense  of  a 
form  of  words  heretofore  so  vain — the  famous  "false 
position"  that  had  so  often  helped  out  a  phrase.  One 
used  names  in  that  way  without  knowing  what  they 
were  worth ;  then  of  a  sudden,  one  fine  day,  their  mean 
ing  was  bitter  in  the  mouth.  This  was  a  truth  with  the 
relish  of  which  his  fireside  hours  were  occupied,  and  he 
was  quite  conscious  that  a  man  was  exposed  who  looked 
so  perpetually  as  if  something  had  disagreed  with  him. 
The  look  to  be  worn  at  the  Birthplace  was  properly  the 

286 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

beatific,  and  when  once  it  had  fairly  been  missed  by 
those  who  took  it  for  granted,  who,  indeed,  paid  six 
pence  for  it — like  the  table-wine  in  provincial  France, 
it  was  compris — one  would  be  sure  to  have  news  of  the 
remark. 

News  accordingly  was  what  Gedge  had  been  expect 
ing — and  what  he  knew,  above  all,  had  been  expected 
by  his  wife,  who  had  a  way  of  sitting  at  present  as  with 
an  ear  for  a  certain  knock.  She  didn't  watch  him, 
didn't  follow  him  about  the  house,  at  the  public  hours, 
to  spy  upon  his  treachery ;  and  that  could  touch  him  even 
though  her  averted  eyes  went  through  him  more  than 
her  fixed.  Her  mistrust  was  so  perfectly  expressed  by 
her  manner  of  showing  she  trusted  that  he  never  felt 
so  nervous,  never  so  tried  to  keep  straight,  as  when  she 
most  let  him  alone.  When  the  crowd  thickened  and 
they  had  of  necessity  to  receive  together  he  tried  him 
self  to  get  off  by  allowing  her  as  much  as  possible  the 
word.  When  people  appealed  to  him  he  turned  to  her 
— and  with  more  of  ceremony  than  their  relation  war 
ranted  :  he  couldn't  help  this  either,  .if  it  seemed  ironic — 
as  to  the  person  most  concerned  or  most  competent. 
He  flattered  himself  at  these  moments  that  no  one 
would  have  guessed  her  being  his  wife;  especially  as,  to 
do  her  justice,  she  met  his  manner  with  a  wonderful 
grim  bravado — grim,  so  to  say,  for  himself,  grim  by  its 
outrageous  cheerfulness  for  the  simple-minded.  The 
lore  she  did  produce  for  them,  the  associations  of  the 
sacred  spot  that  she  developed,  multiplied,  embroidered ; 
the  things  in  short  she  said  and  the  stupendous  way  she 
said  them!  She  wasn't  a  bit  ashamed;  for  why  need 
virtue  be  ever  ashamed?  It  was  virtue,  for  it  put 
bread  into  his  mouth — he  meanwhile,  on  his  side,  taking 
it  out  of  hers.  He  had  seen  Grant-Jackson,  on  the 
October  day,  in  the  Birthplace  itself — the  right  setting 
of  course  for  such  an  interview ;  and  what  occurred  was 
that,  precisely,  when  the  scene  had  ended  and  he  had 

287 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

come  back  to  their  own  sitting-room,  the  question  she 
put  to  him  for  information  was :  "Have  you  settled  it 
that  I'm  to  starve?" 

She  had  for  a  long  time  said  nothing  to  him  so 
straight — which  was  but  a  proof  of  her  real  anxiety; 
the  straightness  of  Grant- Jackson's  visit,  following  on 
the  very  slight  sinuosity  of  a  note  shortly  before  re 
ceived  from  him,  made  tension  show  for  what  it  was. 
By  this  time,  really,  however,  his  decision  had  been 
taken;  the  minutes  elapsing  between  his  reappearance 
at  the  domestic  fireside  and  his  having,  from  the  other 
threshold,  seen  Grant- Jackson's  broad,  well-fitted  back, 
the  back  of  a  banker  and  a  patriot,  move  away,  had, 
though  few,  presented  themselves  to  him  as  supremely 
critical.  They  formed,  as  it  were,  the  hinge  of  his 
door,  that  door  actually  ajar  so  as  to  show  him  a  pos 
sible  fate  beyond  it,  but  which,  with  his  hand,  in  a 
spasm,  thus  tightening  on  the  knob,  he  might  either 
open  wide  or  close  partly  and  altogether.  He  stood, 
in  the  autumn  dusk,  in  the  little  museum  that  consti 
tuted  the  vestibule  of  the  temple,  and  there,  as  with  a 
concentrated  push  at  the  crank  of  a  windlass,  he  brought 
himself  round.  The  portraits  on  the  walls  seemed 
vaguely  to  watch  for  it ;  it  was  in  their  august  presence 
— kept  dimly  august,  for  the  moment,  by  Grant-Jack 
son's  impressive  check  of  his  application  of  a  match  to 
the  vulgar  gas — that  the  great  man  had  uttered,  as  if  it 

said  all,  his  "You  know,  my  dear  fellow,  really !" 

He  had  managed  it  with  the  special  tact  of  a  fat  man, 
always,  when  there  was  any,  very  fine ;  he  had  got  the 
most  out  of  the  time,  the  place,  the  setting,  all  the  little 
massed  admonitions  and  symbols;  confronted  there 
with  his  victim  on  the  spot  that  he  took  occasion  to 
name  to  him  afresh  as,  to  his  piety  and  patriotism,  the 
most  sacred  on  earth,  he  had  given  it  to  be  understood 
that  in  the  first  place  he  was  lost  in  amazement  and  that 
in  the  second  he  expected  a  single  warning  now  to  suf- 

288 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

fice.  Not  to  insist  too  much  moreover  on  the  question 
of  gratitude,  he  would  let  his  remonstrance  rest,  if  need 
be,  solely  on  the  question  of  taste.  As  a  matter  of  taste 
alone !  But  he  was  surely  not  to  be  obliged  to  fol 
low  that  up.  Poor  Gedge  indeed  would  have  been  sorry 
to  oblige  him,  for  he  saw  it  was  precisely  to  the  atro 
cious  taste  of  unthankfulness  that  the  allusion  was 
made.  When  he  said  he  wouldn't  dwell  on  what  the 
fortunate  occupant  of  the  post  owed  him  for  the  stout 
battle  originally  fought  on  his  behalf,  he  simply  meant 
he  would.  That  was  his  tact — which,  with  everything 
else  that  had  been  mentioned,  in  the  scene,  to  help,  really 
had  the  ground  to  itself.  The  day  had  been  when 
Gedge  couldn't  have  thanked  him  enough — though  he 
had  thanked  him,  he  considered,  almost  fulsomely — 
and  nothing,  nothing  that  he  could  coherently  or  rep 
utably  name,  had  happened  since  then.  From  the  mo 
ment  he  was  pulled  up,  in  short,  he  had  no  case,  and  if 
he  exhibited,  instead  of  one,  only  hot  tears  in  his  eyes, 
the  mystic  gloom  of  the  temple  either  prevented  his 
friend  from  seeing  them  or  rendered  it  possible  that 
they  stood  for  remorse.  He  had  dried  them,  with  the 
pads  formed  by  the  base  of  his  bony  thumbs,  before  he 
went  in  to  Isabel.  This  was  the  more  fortunate  as,  in 
spite  of  her  inquiry,  prompt  and  pointed,  he  but  moved 
about  the  room  looking  at  her  hard.  Then  he  stood 
before  the  fire  a  little  with  his  hands  behind  him  and  his 
coat-tails  divided,  quite  as  the  person  in  permanent  pos 
session.  It  was  an  indication  his  wife  appeared  to  take 
in ;  but  she  put  nevertheless  presently  another  question. 
"You  object  to  telling  me  what  he  said?" 

"He  said  'You  know,  my  dear  fellow,  really !' ' 

"And  is  that  all?" 

"Practically.     Except  that  I'm  a  thankless  beast." 

"Well !"  she  responded,  not  with  dissent. 

"You  mean  that  I  amf" 

"Are  those  the  words  he  used?"  she  asked  with  a 
scruple. 

289 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

Gedge  continued  to  think.  "The  words  he  used  were 
that  I  give  away  the  Show  and  that,  from  several 
sources,  it  has  come  round  to  Them." 

"As  of  course  a  baby  would  have  known!"  And 
then  as  her  husband  said  nothing:  "Were  those  the 
words  he  used  ?" 

"  Absolutely.     He  couldn't  have  used  better  ones." 

"Did  he  call  it,"  Mrs.  Gedge  inquired,  "the  'Show'  ?" 

"  Of  course  he  did.     The  Biggest  on  Earth." 

She  winced,  looking  at  him  hard — she  wondered, 
but  only  for  a  moment.  "Well,  it  is." 

"Then  it's  something,"  Gedge  went  on,  "to  have 
given  that  away.  But,"  he  added,  "I've  taken  it  back." 

"You  mean  you've  been  convinced  ?" 

"I  mean  I've  been  scared." 

"At  last,  at  last !"  she  gratefully  breathed. 

"Oh,  it  was  easily  done.  It  was  only  two  words. 
But  here  I  am." 

Her  face  was  now  less  hard  for  him.  "And  what 
two  words?" 

"  'You  know,  Mr.  Gedge,  that  it  simply  won't  do/ 
That  was  all.  But  it  was  the  way  such  a  man  says 
them." 

"I'm  glad,  then,"  Mrs.  Gedge  frankly  averred,  "that 
he  is  such  a  man.  How  did  you  ever  think  it  could 
do?" 

"Well,  it  was  my  critical  sense.  I  didn't  ever  know 
I  had  one — till  They  came  and  (by  putting  me  here) 
waked  it  up  in  me.  Then  I  had,  somehow,  don't  you 
see  ?  to  live  with  it ;  and  I  seemed  to  feel  that,  somehow 
or  other,  giving  it  time  and  in  the  long  run,  it  might,  it 
ought  to,  come  out  on  top  of  the  heap.  Now  that's 
where,  he  says,  it  simply  won't  do.  So  I  must  put  it — 
I  have  put  it — at  the  bottom." 

"A  very  good  place,  then,  for  a  critical  sense !"  And 
Isabel,  more  placidly  now,  folded  her  work.  "If,  that 
is,  you  can  only  keep  it  there.  If  it  doesn't  struggle 
up  again." 

290 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

"It  can't  struggle."  He  was  still  before  the  fire, 
looking  round  at  the  warm,  low  room,  peaceful  in  the 
lamplight,  with  the  hum  of  the  kettle  for  the  ear,  with 
the  curtain  drawn  over  the  leaded  casement,  a  short 
moreen  curtain  artfully  chosen  by  Isabel  for  the  effect 
of  the  olden  time,  its  virtue  of  letting  the  light  within 
show  ruddy  to  the  street.  "It's  dead,"  he  went  on;  "I 
killed  it  just  now." 

He  spoke,  really,  so  that  she  wondered.  "Just 
now?" 

"There  in  the  other  place — I  strangled  it,  poor  thing, 
in  the  dark.  If  you'll  go  out  and  see,  there  must  be 
blood.  Which,  indeed,"  he  added,  "on  an  altar  of  sac 
rifice,  is  all  right.  But  the  place  is  forever  spattered." 

"I  don't  want  to  go  out  and  see."  She  rested  her 
locked  hands  on  the  needlework  folded  on  her  knee, 
and  he  knew,  with  her  eyes  on  him,  that  a  look  he  had 
seen  before  was  in  her  face.  "You're  off  your  head 
you  know,  my  dear,  in  a  way."  Then,  however,  more 
cheer ingly :  "It's  a  good  job  it  hasn't  been  too  late." 

"Too  late  to  get  it  under  ?" 

"Too  late  for  Them  to  give  you  the  second  chance 
that  I  thank  God  you  accept." 

"Yes,  if  it  had  been !"  And  he  looked  away  as 

through  the  ruddy  curtain  and  into  the  chill  street. 
Then  he  faced  her  again.  "I've  scarcely  got  over  my 
fright  yet.  I  mean,"  he  went  on,  "for  you." 

"And  I  mean  for  you.  Suppose  what  you  had  come 
to  announce  to  me  now  were  that  we  had  got  the  sack. 
How  should  I  enjoy,  do  you  think,  seeing  you  turn 
out?  Yes,  out  there!"  she  added  as  his  eyes  again 
moved  from  their  little  warm  circle  to  the  night  of  early 
winter  on  the  other  side  of  the  pane,  to  the  rare,  quick 
footsteps,  to  the  closed  doors,  to  the  curtains  drawn 
like  their  own,  behind  which  the  small  flat  town,  in 
trinsically  dull,  was  sitting  down  to  supper. 

He  stiffened  himself  as  he  warmed  his  back ;  he  held 
291 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

up  his  head,  shaking  himself  a  little  as  if  to  shake  the 
stoop  out  of  his  shoulders,  but  he  had  to  allow  she  was 
right.  "What  would  have  become  of  us?" 

"What  indeed  ?  We  should  have  begged  our  bread 
— or  I  should  be  taking  in  washing." 

He  was  silent  a  little.  "I'm  too  old.  I  should  have 
begun  sooner." 

"Oh,  God  forbid !"  she  cried. 

"The  pinch,"  he  pursued,  "is  that  I  can  do  nothing 
else." 

"Nothing  whatever !"  she  agreed  with  elation. 

"Whereas  here — if  I  cultivate  it — I  perhaps  can  still 
lie.  But  I  must  cultivate  it." 

"Oh,  you  old  dear !"     And  she  got  up  to  kiss  him. 

"I'll  do  my  best,"  he  said. 

VII 

"Do  you  remember  us?"  the  gentleman  asked  and 
smiled — with  the  lady  beside  him  smiling  too;  speak 
ing  so  much  less  as  an  earnest  pilgrim  or  as  a  tiresome 
tourist  than  as  an  old  acquaintance.  It  was  history  re 
peating  itself  as  Gedge  had  somehow  never  expected, 
with  almost  everything  the  same  except  that  the  evening 
was  now  a  mild  April-end,  except  that  the  visitors  had 
put  off  mourning  and  showed  all  their  bravery — besides 
showing,  as  he  doubtless  did  himself,  though  so  differ 
ently,  for  a  little  older ;  except,  above  all,  that — oh,  see 
ing  them  again  suddenly  affected  him  as  not  a  bit  the 
thing  he  would  have  thought  it.  "We're  in  England 
again,  and  we  were  near ;  I've  a  brother  at  Oxford  with 
whom  we've  been  spending  a  day,  and  we  thought  we'd 
come  over."  So  the  young  man  pleasantly  said  while 
our  friend  took  in  the  queer  fact  that  he  must  himself 
seem  to  them  rather  coldly  to  gape.  They  had  come  in 
the  same  way,  at  the  quiet  close;  another  August  had 
passed,  and  this  was  the  second  spring ;  the  Birthplace, 

292 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

given  the  hour,  was  about  to  suspend  operations  till 
the  morrow ;  the  last  lingerer  had  gone,  and  the  fancy 
of  the  visitors  was,  once  more,  for  a  look  round  by 
themselves.  This  represented  surely  no  greater  pre 
sumption  than  the  terms  on  which  they  had  last  parted 
with  him  seemed  to  warrant;  so  that  if  he  did  inconse- 
quently  stare  it  was  just  in  fact  because  he  was  so  su 
premely  far  from  having  forgotten  them.  But  the 
sight  of  the  pair  luckily  had  a  double  effect,  and  the 
first  precipitated  the  second — the  second  being  really 
his  sudden  vision  that  everything  perhaps  depended  for 
him  on  his  recognising  no  complication.  He  must  go 
straight  on,  since  it  was  what  had  for  more  than  a  year 
now  so  handsomely  answered;  he  must  brazen  it  out 
consistently,  since  that  only  was  what  his  dignity  was  at 
last  reduced  to.  He  mustn't  be  afraid  in  one  way  any 
more  than  he  had  been  in  another;  besides  which  it 
came  over  him  with  a  force  that  made  him  flush  that 
their  visit,  in  its  essence,  must  have  been  for  himself. 
It  was  good  society  again,  and  they  were  the  same.  It 
wasn't  for  him  therefore  to  behave  as  if  he  couldn't 
meet  them. 

These  deep  vibrations,  on  Gedge's  part,  were  as 
quick  as  they  were  deep;  they  came  in  fact  all  at 
once,  so  that  his  response,  his  declaration  that  it  was 
all  right — "  Oh,  rather;  the  hour  doesn't  matter  for 
you! " — had  hung  fire  but  an  instant;  and  when  they 
were  within  and  the  door  closed  behind  them,  with 
in  the  twilight  of  the  temple,  where,  as  before,  the 
votive  offerings  glimmered  on  the  walls,  he  drew 
the  long  breath  of  one  who  might,  by  a  self-be 
trayal,  have  done  something  too  dreadful.  For 
what  had  brought  them  back  was  not,  indubitably, 
the  sentiment  of  the  shrine  itself — since  he  knew 
their  sentiment;  but  their  intelligent  interest  in  the 
queer  case  of  the  priest.  Their  call  was  the  tribute  of 
curiosity,  of  sympathy,  of  a  compassion  really,  as  such 

293 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

things  went,  exquisite — a  tribute  to  that  queerness 
which  entitled  them  to  the  frankest  welcome.  They 
had  wanted,  for  the  generous  wonder  of  it,  to  see  how 
he  was  getting  on,  how  such  a  man  in  such  a  place 
could;  and  they  had  doubtless  more  than  half  expected 
to  see  the  door  opened  by  somebody  who  had  succeeded 
him.  Well,  somebody  had — only  with  a  strange  equiv 
ocation;  as  they  would  have,  poor  things,  to  make  out 
for  themselves,  an  embarrassment  as  to  which  he  pitied 
them.  Nothing  could  have  been  more  odd,  but  verily 
it  was  this  troubled  vision  of  their  possible  bewilder 
ment,  and  this  compunctious  view  of  such  a  return  for 
their  amenity,  that  practically  determined  for  him  his 
tone.  The  lapse  of  the  months  had  but  made  their 
name  familiar  to  him ;  they  had  on  the  other  occasion 
inscribed  it,  among  the  thousand  names,  in  the  current 
public  register,  and  he  had  since  then,  for  reasons  of 
his  own,  reasons  of  feeling,  again  and  again  turned 
back  to  it.  It  was  nothing  in  itself ;  it  told  him  noth 
ing — "Mr.  and  Mrs.  B.  D.  Hayes,  New  York" — one 
of  those  American  labels  that  were  just  like  every  other 
American  label  and  that  were,  precisely,  the  most  re 
markable  thing  about  people  reduced  to  achieving  an 
identity  in  such  other  ways.  They  could  be  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  B.  D.  Hayes  and  yet  they  could  be,  with  all  pre 
sumptions  missing — well,  what  these  callers  were.  It 
had  quickly  enough  indeed  cleared  the  situation  a  little 
further  that  his  friends  had  absolutely,  the  other  time, 
as  it  came  back  to  him,  warned  him  of  his  original  dan 
ger,  their  anxiety  about  which  had  been  the  last  note 
sounded  between  them.  What  he  was  afraid  of,  with 
this  reminiscence,  was  that,  finding  him  still  safe,  they 
would,  the  next  thing,  definitely  congratulate  him  and 
perhaps  even,  no  less  candidly,  ask  him  how  he  had 
managed.  It  was  with  the  sense  of  nipping  some  such 
inquiry  in  the  bud  that,  losing  no  time  and  holding 
himself  with  a  firm  grip,  he  began,  on  the  spot,  down- 

294 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

stairs,  to  make  plain  to  them  how  he  had  managed. 
He  averted  the  question  in  short  by  the  assurance  of  his 
answer.  "Yes,  yes,  I'm  still  here ;  I  suppose  it  is  in  a 
manner  to  one's  profit  that  one  does,  such  as  it  is,  one's 
best."  He  did  his  best  on  the  present  occasion,  did  it 
with  the  gravest  face  he  had  ever  worn  and  a  soft  se 
renity  that  was  like  a  large  damp  sponge  passed  over 
their  previous  meeting — over  everything  in  it,  that  is, 
but  the  fact  of  its  pleasantness. 

"We  stand  here,  you  see,  in  the  old  living-room,  hap 
pily  still  to  be  reconstructed  in  the  mind's  eye,  in  spite 
of  the  havoc  of  time,  which  we  have  fortunately,  of  late 
years,  been  able  to  arrest.  It  was  of  course  rude  and 
humble,  but  it  must  have  been  snug  and  quaint,  and  we 
have  at  least  the  pleasure  of  knowing  that  the  tradition 
in  respect  to  the  features  that  do  remain  is  delightfully 
uninterrupted.  Across  that  threshold  He  habitually 
passed ;  through  those  low  windows,  in  childhood,  He 
peered  out  into  the  world  that  He  was  to  make  so  much 
happier  by  the  gift  to  it  of  His  genius;  over  the  boards 
of  this  floor — that  is  over  some  of  them,  for  we  mustn't 
be  carried  away ! — his  little  feet  often  pattered ;  and  the 
beams  of  this  ceiling  (we  must  really  in  some  places 
take  care  of  our  heads!)  he  endeavoured,  in  boyish 
strife,  to  jump  up  and  touch.  It's  not  often  that  in  the 
early  home  of  genius  and  renown  the  whole  tenor 
of  existence  is  laid  so  bare,  not  often  that  we  are 
able  to  retrace,  from  point  to  point  and  from  step 
to  step,  its  connection  with  objects,  with  influences 
— to  build  it  round  again  with  the  little  solid  facts 
out  of  which  it  sprang.  This,  therefore,  I  need 
scarcely  remind  you,  is  what  makes  the  small  space 
between  these  walls — so  modest  to  measurement,  so 
insignificant  of  aspect — unique  on  all  the  earth. 
There  is  nothing  like  it"  Morris  Gedge  went  on,  insist 
ing  as  solemnly  and  softly,  for  his  bewildered  hearers, 
as  over  a  pulpit-edge ;  "there  is  nothing  at  all  like  it  any- 

295 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

where  in  the  world.  There  is  nothing,  only  reflect,  for 
the  combination  of  greatness,  and,  as  we  venture  to  say, 
of  intimacy.  You  may  find  elsewhere  perhaps  abso 
lutely  fewer  changes,  but  where  shall  you  find  a  pres 
ence  equally  diffused,  uncontested  and  undisturbed? 
Where  in  particular  shall  you  find,  on  the  part  of  the 
abiding  spirit,  an  equally  towering  eminence?  You 
may  find  elsewhere  eminence  of  a  considerable  order, 
but  where  shall  you  find  with  it,  don't  you  see,  changes, 
after  all,  so  few,  and  the  contemporary  element  caught 
so,  as  it  were,  in  the  very  fact?  "  His  visitors,  at  first 
confounded,  but  gradually  spellbound,  were  still  gaping 
with  the  universal  gape — wondering,  he  judged,  into 
what  strange  pleasantry  he  had  been  suddenly  moved  to 
break  out,  and  yet  beginning  to  see  in  him  an  intention 
beyond  a  joke,  so  that  they  started,  at  this  point,  al 
most  jumped,  when,  by  as  rapid  a  transition,  he  made, 
toward  the  old  fireplace,  a  dash  that  seemed  to  illustrate, 
precisely,  the  act  of  eager  catching.  "It  is  in  this  old 
chimney  corner,  the  quaint  inglenook  of  our  ancestors — 
just  there  in  the  far  angle,  where  His  little  stool  was 
placed,  and  where,  I  dare  say,  if  we  could  look  close 
enough,  we  should  find  the  hearthstone  scraped  with 
His  little  feet — that  we  see  the  inconceivable  child  gaz 
ing  into  the  blaze  of  the  old  oaken  logs  and  making  out 
there  pictures  and  stories,  see  Him  conning,  with  curly 
bent  head,  His  well-worn  hornbook,  or  poring  over 
some  scrap  of  an  ancient  ballad,  some  page  of  some  such 
rudely  bound  volume  of  chronicles  as  lay,  we  may  be 
sure,  in  His  father's  window-seat." 

It  was,  he  even  himself  felt  at  this  moment,  wonder 
fully  done ;  no  auditors,  for  all  his  thousands,  had  ever 
yet  so  inspired  him.  The  odd,  slightly  alarmed  shy 
ness  in  the  two  faces,  as  if  in  a  drawing-room,  in  their 
"  good  society,"  exactly,  some  act  incongruous,  some 
thing  grazing  the  indecent,  had  abruptly  been  perpe 
trated,  the  painful  reality  of  which  faltered  before  com- 

296 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

ing  home — the  visible  effect  on  his  friends,  in  fine, 
wound  him  up  as  to  the  sense  that  they  were  worth  the 
trick.  It  came  of  itself  now — he  had  got  it  so  by 
heart;  but  perhaps  really  it  had  never  come  so  well,  with 
the  staleness  so  disguised,  the  interest  so  renewed  and 
the  clerical  unction,  demanded  by  the  priestly  character, 
so  successfully  distilled.  Mr.  Hayes  of  New  York  had 
more  than  once  looked  at  his  wife,  and  Mrs.  Hayes  of 
New  York  had  more  than  once  looked  at  her  husband — 
only,  up  to  now,  with  a  stolen  glance,  with  eyes  it  had 
not  been  easy  to  detach  from  the  remarkable  counte 
nance  by  the  aid  of  which  their  entertainer  held  them. 
At  present,  however,  after  an  exchange  less  furtive, 
they  ventured  on  a  sign  that  they  had  not  been  ap 
pealed  to  in  vain.  "Charming,  charming,  Mr.  Gedge !" 
Mr.  Hayes  broke  out ;  "we  feel  that  we've  caught  you 
in  the  rnood." 

His  wife  hastened  to  assent — it  eased  the  tension.  "It 
would  be  quite  the  way ;  except,"  she  smiled,  "that  you'd 
be  too  dangerous.  You're  really  a  genius!" 

Gedge  looked  at  her  hard,  but  yielding  no  inch,  even 
though  she  touched  him  there  at  a  point  of  conscious 
ness  that  quivered.  This  was  the  prodigy  for  him,  and 
had  been,  the  year  through — that  he  did  it  all,  he  found, 
easily,  did  it  better  than  he  had  done  anything  else  in  his 
life;  with  so  high  and  broad  an  effect,  in  truth,  an  in 
spiration  so  rich  and  free,  that  his  poor  wife  now,  liter 
ally,  had  been  moved  more  than  once  to  fresh  fear. 
She  had  had  her  bad  moments,  he  knew,  after  taking 
the  measure  of  his  new  direction — moments  of  read 
justed  suspicion  in  which  she  wondered  if  he  had  not 
simply  embraced  another,  a  different  perversity.  There 
\vould  be  more  than  one  fashion  of  giving  away  the 
show,  and  wasn't  this  perhaps  a  question  of  giving  it 
away  by  excess  ?  He  could  dish  them  by  too  much  ro 
mance  as  well  as  by  too  little ;  she  had  not  hitherto  fairly 
apprehended  that  there  might  be  too  much.  It  was  a 

297 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

way  like  another,  at  any  rate,  of  reducing  the  place  to 
the  absurd ;  which  reduction,  if  he  didn't  look  out,  would 
reduce  them  again  to  the  prospect  of  the  streets,  and  this 
time  surely  without  an  appeal.  It  all  depended,  indeed 
— he  knew  she  knew  that — on  how  much  Grant-Jackson 
and  the  others,  how  much  the  Body,  in  a  word,  would 
take.  He  knew  she  knew  what  he  himself  held  it  would 
take — that  he  considered  no  limit  could  be  drawn  to  the 
quantity.  They  simply  wanted  it  piled  up,  and  so  did 
everybody  else;  wherefore,  if  no  one  reported  him,  as 
before,  why  were  They  to  be  uneasy  ?  It  was  in  conse 
quence  of  idiots  brought  to  reason  that  he  had  been 
dealt  with  before;  but  as  there  was  now  no  form  of 
idiocy  that  he  didn't  systematically  flatter,  goading  it  on 
really  to  its  own  private  doom,  who  was  ever  to  pull  the 
string  of  the  guillotine  ?  The  axe  was  in  the  air — yes ; 
but  in  a  world  gorged  to  satiety  there  were  no  revolu 
tions.  And  it  had  been  vain  for  Isabel  to  ask  if  the 
other  thunder-growl  also  hadn't  come  out  of  the  blue. 
There  was  actually  proof  positive  that  the  winds  were 
now  at  rest.  How  could  they  be  more  so? — he  ap 
pealed  to  the  receipts.  These  were  golden  days — the 
show  had  never  so  flourished.  So  he  had  argued,  so  he 
was  arguing  still — and,  it  had  to  be  owned,  with  every 
appearance  in  his  favour.  Yet  if  he  inwardly  winced 
at  the  tribute  to  his  plausibility  rendered  by  his  flushed 
friends,  this  was  because  he  felt  in  it  the  real  ground  of 
his  optimism.  The  charming  woman  before  him  ac 
knowledged  his  "genius"  as  he  himself  had  had  to  do. 
He  had  been  surprised  at  his  facility  until  he  had  grown 
used  to  it.  Whether  or  no  he  had,  as  a  fresh  menace 
to  his  future,  found  a  new  perversity,  he  had  found  a 
vocation  much  older,  evidently,  than  he  had  at  first  been 
prepared  to  recognise.  He  had  done  himself  injustice. 
He  liked  to  be  brave  because  it  came  so  easy ;  he  could 
measure  it  off  by  the  yard.  It  was  in  the  Birthroom, 
above  all,  that  he  continued  to  do  this,  having  ushered 

298 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 

up  his  companions  without,  as  he  was  still  more  elated 
to  feel,  the  turn  of  a  hair.  She  might  take  it  as  she 
liked,  but  he  had  had  the  lucidity — all,  that  is,  for  his 
own  safety — to  meet  without  the  grace  of  an  answer  the 
homage  of  her  beautiful  smile.  She  took  it  apparently, 
and  her  husband  took  it,  but  as  a  part  of  his  odd  hu 
mour,  and  they  followed  him  aloft  with  faces  now  a 
little  more  responsive  to  the  manner  in  which,  on  that 
spot,  he  would  naturally  come  out.  He  came  out, 
according  to  the  word  of  his  assured  private  receipt, 
"  strong."  He  missed  a  little,  in  truth,  the  usual 
round-eyed  question  from  them — the  inveterate  art 
less  cue  with  which,  from  moment  to  moment,  clus 
tered  troops  had,  for  a  year,  obliged  him.  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Hayes  were  from  New  York,  but  it  was  a  little 
like  singing,  as  he  had  heard  one  of  his  Americans 
once  say  about  something,  to  a  Boston  audience.  He 
did  none  the  less  what  he  could,  and  it  was  ever  his 
practice  to  stop  still  at  a  certain  spot  in  the  room  and, 
after  having  secured  atention  by  look  and  gesture, 
suddenly  shoot  off:  "  Here!  " 

They  always  understood,  the  good  people — he  could 
fairly  love  them  now  for  it;  they  always  said,  breath 
lessly  and  unanimously,  'There  ?"  and  stared  down  at 
the  designated  point  quite  as  if  some  trace  of  the  grand 
event  were  still  to  be  made  out.  This  movement  pro 
duced,  he  again  looked  round.  "Consider  it  well :  the 
spot  of  earth !"  "Oh,  but  it  isn't  earth!"  the  bold 
est  spirit — there  was  always  a  boldest — would  gener 
ally  pipe  out.  Then  the  guardian  of  the  Birthplace 
would  be  truly  superior — as  if  the  unfortunate  had  fig 
ured  the  Immortal  coming  up,  like  a  potato,  through 
the  soil.  "I'm  not  suggesting  that  He  was  born  on  the 
bare  ground.  He  was  born  here!" — with  an  uncom 
promising  dig  of  his  heel.  "There  ought  to  be  a  brass, 
with  an  inscription,  let  in."  "Into  the  floor?" — it  al 
ways  came.  "Birth  and  burial :  seedtime,  summer, 

299 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

autumn !" — that  always,  with  its  special,  right  cadence, 
thanks  to  his  unfailing  spring,  came  too.  "Why  not 
as  well  as  into  the  pavement  of  the  church? — youVe 
seen  our  grand  old  church?"  The  former  of  which 
questions  nobody  ever  answered — abounding,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  make  up,  in  relation  to  the  latter.  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Hayes  even  were  at  first  left  dumb  by  it — not 
indeed,  to  do  them  justice,  having  uttered  the  word  that 
produced  it.  They  had  uttered  no  word  while  he  kept 
the  game  up,  and  (though  that  made  it  a  little  more 
difficult)  he  could  yet  stand  triumphant  before  them 
after  he  had  finished  with  his  flourish.  Then  it  was 
only  that  Mr.  Hayes  of  New  York  broke  silence. 

"  Well,  if  we  wanted  to  see,  I  think  I  may  say  we're 
quite  satisfied.  As  my  wife  says,  it  zvould  seem  to  be 
your  line."  He  spoke  now,  visibly,  with  more  ease,  as 
if  a  light  had  come :  though  he  made  no  joke  of  it,  for  a 
reason  that  presently  appeared.  They  were  coming 
down  the  little  stair,  and  it  was  on  the  descent  that  his 
companion  added  her  word. 

"Do  you  know  what  we  half  did  think ?"  And 

then  to  her  husband :  "Is  it  dreadful  to  tell  him?" 
They  were  in  the  room  below,  and  the  young  woman, 
also  relieved,  expressed  the  feeling  with  gaiety.  She 
smiled,  as  before,  at  Morris  Gedge,  treating  him  as  a 
person  with  whom  relations  were  possible,  yet  remain 
ing  just  uncertain  enough  to  invoke  Mr.  Hayes's  opin 
ion.  "We  have  awfully  wanted — from  what  we  had 
heard."  But  she  met  her  husband's  graver  face;  he 
was  not  quite  out  of  the  wood.  At  this  she  was  slight 
ly  flurried — but  she  cut  it  short.  "You  must  know — 
don't  you? — that,  with  the  crowds  who  listen  to  you, 
we'd  have  heard." 

He  looked  from  one  to  the  other,  and  once  more 
again,  with  force,  something  came  over  him.  They  had 
kept  him  in  mind,  they  were  neither  ashamed  nor  afraid 
to  show  it,  and  it  was  positively  an  interest,  on  the  part 

300 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

of  this  charming  creature  and  this  keen,  cautious  gen 
tleman,  an  interest  resisting  oblivion  and  surviving  sep 
aration,  that  had  governed  their  return.  Their  other 
visit  had  been  the  brightest  thing  that  had  ever  hap 
pened  to  him,  but  this  was  the  gravest ;  so  that  at  the  end 
of  a  minute  something  broke  in  him  and  his  mask,  of  it 
self,  fell  off.  He  chucked,  as  he  would  have  said,  con 
sistency;  which,  in  its  extinction,  left  the  tears  in  his 
eyes.  His  smile  was  therefore  queer.  "Heard  how 
I'm  going  it?" 

The  young  man,  though  still  looking  at  him  hard, 
felt  sure,  with  this,  of  his  own  ground.  "  Of  course, 
you're  tremendously  talked  about.  You've  gone  round 
the  world." 

"  You've  heard  of  me  in  America  ?" 

"Why,  almost  of  nothing  else!" 

"That  was  what  made  us  feel !"  Mrs.  Hayes 

contributed. 

"That  you  must  see  for  yourselves?"  Again  he 
compared,  poor  Gedge,  their  faces.  "  Do  you  mean  I 
excite — a — scandal?  " 

"  Dear  no !  Admiration.  You  renew  so,"  the 
young  man  observed,  "  the  interest." 

"  Ah,  there  it  is !  "  said  Gedge  with  eyes  of  advent 
ure  that  seemed  to  rest  beyond  the  Atlantic. 

"  They  listen,  month  after  month,  when  they're  out 
here,  as  you  must  have  seen ;  and  they  go  home  and  talk. 
But  they  sing  your  praise." 

Our  friend  could  scarce  take  it  in.     "Over  there?" 

"Over  there.  I  think  you  must  be  even  in  the 
papers." 

"Without  abuse?  " 

"Oh,  we  don't  abuse  everyone." 

Mrs.  Hayes,  in  her  beauty,  it  was  clear,  stretched  the 
point.  "  They  rave  about  you." 

"  Then  they  don't  know  ?  " 

"Nobody  knows,"  the  young  man  declared;  "it 
301 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

wasn't  anyone's  knowledge,  at  any  rate,  that  made  us 
uneasy." 

"  It  was  your  own  ?     I  mean  your  own  sense  ?  " 

"Well,  call  it  that.  We  remembered,  and  we  won 
dered  what  had  happened.  So,"  Mr.  Hayes  now 
frankly  laughed,  "  we  came  to  see." 

Gedge  stared  through  his  film  of  tears.  "  Came 
from  America  to  see  me?  " 

"Oh,  a  part  of  the  way.  But  we  wouldn't  in  Eng 
land,  not  have  seen  you." 

"And  now  we  have  ! "  the  young  woman  soothingly 
added. 

Gedge  still  could  only  gape  at  the  candour  of  the 
tribute.  But  he  tried  to  meet  them — it  was  what  was 
least  poor  for  him — in  their  own  key.  "Well,  how  do 
you  like  it  ?  " 

Mrs.  Hayes,  he  thought — if  their  answer  were  im 
portant — laughed  a  little  nervously.  "Oh,  you  see." 

Once  more  he  looked  from  one  to  the  other.  "  It's 
too  beastly  easy,  you  know." 

Her  husband  raised  his  eyebrows.  "  You  conceal 
your  art.  The  emotion — yes;  that  must  be  easy;  the 
general  tone  must  flow.  But  about  your  facts — you've 
so  many :  how  do  you  get  them  through  ?  " 

Gedge  wondered.  "  You  think  I  get  too  many ?  " 

At  this  they  were  amused  together.  "  That's  just 
what  we  came  to  see  !  " 

"Well,  you  know,  I've  felt  my  way ;  I've  gone  step  by 
step ;  you  wouldn't  believe  how  I've  tried  it  on.  This — 
where  you  see  me — is  where  I've  come  out."  After 
which,  as  they  said  nothing :  "  You  hadn't  thought  I 
could  come  out  ?  " 

Again  they  just  waited,  but  the  husband  spoke :  "Are 
you  so  awfully  sure  you  are  out?  " 

Gedge  drew  himself  up  in  the  manner  of  his  moments 
of  emotion,  almost  conscious  even  that,  with  his  sloping 
shoulders,  his  long  lean  neck  and  his  nose  so  prominent 

302 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

in  proportion  to  other  matters,  he  looked  the  more  like 
a  giraffe.  It  was  now  at  last  that  he  really  caught  on. 
"  I  may  be  in  danger  again — and  the  danger  is  what 
has  moved  you  ?  Oh  !  "  the  poor  man  fairly  moaned. 
His  appreciation  of  it  quite  weakened  him,  yet  he  pulled 
himself  together.  "  You've  your  view  of  my  dan- 
ger?" 

It  was  wondrous  how,  with  that  note  definitely 
sounded,  the  air  was  cleared.  Lucid  Mr.  Hayes,  at  the 
end  of  a  minute,  had  put  the  thing  in  a  nutshell.  "  I 
don't  know  what  you'll  think  of  us — for  being  so  beast 
ly  curious." 

"  I  think,"  poor  Gedge  grimaced,  "  you're  only  too 
beastly  kind." 

"  It's  all  your  own  fault,"  his  friend  returned,  "  for 
presenting  us  (who  are  not  idiots,  say)  with  so  striking 
a  picture  of  a  crisis.  At  our  other  visit,  you  remem 
ber,"  he  smiled,  "  you  created  an  anxiety  for  the  op 
posite  reason.  Therefore  if  this  should  again  be  a  crisis 
for  you,  you'd  really  give  us  the  case  with  an  ideal 
completeness." 

"You  make  me  wish,"  said  Morris  Gedge,  "  that  it 
might  be  one." 

"Well,  don't  try — for  our  amusement — to  bring  one 
on.  I  don't  see,  you  know,  how  you  can  have  much 
margin.  Take  care — take  care." 

Gedge  took  it  pensively  in.  "Yes,  that  was  what 
you  said  a  year  ago.  You  did  me  the  honour  to  be  un 
easy  as  my  wife  was." 

Which  determined  on  the  young  woman's  part  an 
immediate  question.  "  May  I  ask,  then,  if  Mrs.  Gedge 
is  now  at  rest  ?  " 

"  No ;  since  you  do  ask.  She  fears,  at  least,  that  I  go 
too  far;  she  doesn't  believe  in  my  margin.  You  see, 
we  had  our  scare  after  your  visit.  They  came  down." 

His  friends  were  all  interest.  "Ah  !  They  came 
down?" 

303 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Heavy.  They  brought  ine  down.  That's  why- 


" Why  you  are  down  ?  "  Mrs.  Hayes  sweetly  de 
manded. 

"Ah,  but  my  dear  man,"  her  husband  interposed, 
"  you're  not  down ;  you're  up!  You're  only  up  a  differ 
ent  tree,  but  you're  up  at  the  tip-top." 

"You  mean  I  take  it  too  high?  " 

"  That's  exactly  the  question,"  the  young  man 
answered ;  "  and  the  possibility,  as  matching  your  first 
danger,  is  just  what  we  felt  we  couldn't,  if  you  didn't 
mind,  miss  the  measure  of." 

Gedge  looked  at  him.  "  I  feel  that  I  know  what  you 
at  bottom  hoped." 

"We  at  bottom  '  hope,'  surely,  that  you're  all  right." 

"  In  spite  of  the  fool  it  makes  of  every  one?  " 

Mr.  Hayes  of  New  York  smiled.  "Say  because 
of  that.  We  only  ask  to  believe  that  everyone  is  a 
fool !  " 

"Only  you  haven't  been,  without  reassurance,  able  to 
imagine  fools  of  the  size  that  my  case  demands  ?  "  And 
Gedge  had  a  pause,  while,  as  if  on  the  chance  of  some 
proof,  his  companion  waited.  "Well,  I  won't  pretend 
to  you  that  your  anxiety  hasn't  made  me,  doesn't  threat 
en  to  make  me,  a  bit  nervous ;  though  I  don't  quite  un 
derstand  it  if,  as  you  say,  people  but  rave  about  me." 

"Oh,  that  report  was  from  the  other  side;  people  in 
our  country  so  very  easily  rave.  You've  seen  small 
children  laugh  to  shrieks  when  tickled  in  a  new  place. 
So  there  are  amiable  millions  with  us  who  are  but  small 
children.  They  perpetually  present  new  places  for  the 
tickler.  What  we've  seen  in  further  lights,"  Mr. 
Hayes  good-humouredly  pursued,  "is  your  people  here 
— the  Committee,  the  Board,  or  whatever  the  powers  to 
whom  you're  responsible." 

"Call  them  my  friend  Grant-Jackson  then — my  orig 
inal  backer,  though  I  admit,  for  that  reason,  perhaps 
my  most  formidable  critic.  It's  with  him,  practically, 

3°4 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

I  deal;  or  rather  it's  by  him  I'm  dealt  with — was  dealt 
with  before.  I  stand  or  fall  by  him.  But  he  has  given 
me  my  head." 

"  Mayn't  he  then  want  you,"  Mrs.  Hayes  inquired, 
"  just  to  show  as  flagrantly  running  away?  " 

"Of  course — I  see  what  you  mean.  I'm  riding, 
blindly  for  a  fall,  and  They're  watching  (to  be  tender 
of  me!)  for  the  smash  that  may  come  of  itself.  It's 
Machiavellic — but  everything's  possible.  And  what 
did  you  just  now  mean,"  Gedge  asked — "  especially  if 
you've  only  heard  of  my  prosperity — by  your  '  further 
lights'?" 

His  friends  for  an  instant  looked  embarrassed,  but 
Mr.  Hayes  came  to  the  point.  "We've  heard  of  your 
prosperity,  but  we've  also,  remember,  within  a  few 
minutes,  heard  you." 

"  I  was  determined  you  should,"  said  Gedge.  "  I'm 
good  then — but  I  overdo?"  His  strained  grin  was 
still  sceptical. 

Thus  challenged,  at  any  rate,  his  visitor  pronounced. 
"Well,  if  you  don't;  if  at  the  end  of  six  months  more 
it's  clear  that  you  haven't  overdone ;  then,  then " 

"Then  what?" 

'  Then  it's  great." 

"  But  it  is  great — greater  than  anything  of  the  sort 
ever  was.  I  overdo,  thank  goodness,  yes;  or  I  would 
if  it  were  a  thing  you  could." 

"Oh,  well,  if  there's  proof  that  you  can't !" 

With  which,  and  an  expressive  gesture,  Mr.  Hayes 
threw  up  his  fears. 

His  wife,  however,  for  a  moment,  seemed  unable  to 
let  them  go.  "  Don't  They  want  then  any  truth? — 
none  even  for  the  mere  look  of  it  ?  " 

"  The  look  of  it,"  said  Morris  Gedge,  "  is  what  I 
give  !  " 

It  made  them,  the  others,  exchange  a  look  of  their 
own.  Then  she  smiled.  "  Oh,  well,  if  they  think 


305 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

"You  at  least  don't?  You're  like  my  wife — which 
indeed,  I  remember,"  Gedge  added,  "is  a  similarity  I 
expressed  a  year  ago  the  wish  for!  At  any  rate  I 
frighten  her." 

The  young  husband,  with  an  "Ah,  wives  are  ter 
rible  !  "  smoothed  it  over,  and  their  visit  would  have 
failed  of  further  excuse  had  not,  at  this  instant,  a  move 
ment  at  the  other  end  of  the  room  suddenly  engaged 
them.  The  evening  had  so  nearly  closed  in,  though 
Gedge,  in  the  course  of  their  talk,  had  lighted  the  lamp 
nearest  them,  that  they  had  not  distinguished,  in  con 
nection  with  the  opening  of  the  door  of  communication 
to  the  warden's  lodge,  the  appearance  of  another  person, 
an  eager  woman,  who,  in  her  impatience,  had  barely 
paused  before  advancing.  Mrs.  Gedge — her  identity 
took  but  a  few  seconds  to  become  vivid — was  upon 
them,  and  she  had  not  been  too  late  for  Mr.  Hayes's 
last  remark.  Gedge  saw  at  once  that  she  had  come 
with  news;  no  need  even,  for  that  certitude,  of  her 
quick  retort  to  the  words  in  the  air — "  You  may  say  as 
well,  sir,  that  they're  often,  poor  wives,  terrified  !  " 
She  knew  nothing  of  the  friends  whom,  at  so  unnatural 
an  hour,  he  was  showing  about ;  but  there  was  no  live 
lier  sign  for  him  that  this  didn't  matter  than  the  pos 
sibility  with  which  she  intensely  charged  her  "Grant- 
Jackson,  to  see  you  at  once  !  " — letting  it,  so  to  speak, 
fly  in  his  face. 

"  He  has  been  with  you?  " 

"  Only  a  minute — he's  there.  But  it's  you  he  wants 
to  see." 

He  looked  at  the  others.  "And  what  does  he  want, 
dear?" 

"  God  knows !  There  it  is.  It's  his  horrid  hour — 
it  was  that  other  time." 

She  had  nervously  turned  to  the  others,  overflowing 
to  them,  in  her  dismay,  for  all  their  strangeness — quite, 
as  he  said  to  himself,  like  a  woman  of  the  people.  She 

306 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

was  the  bare-headed  good  wife  talking  in  the  street  about 
the  row  in  the  house,  and  it  was  in  this  character  that 
he  instantly  introduced  her :  "  My  dear  doubting  wife, 
who  will  do  her  best  to  entertain  you  while  I  wait  upon 
our  friend."  And  he  explained  to  her  as  he  could  his 
now  protesting  companions — "  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hayes 
of  New  York,  who  have  been  here  before."  He  knew, 
without  knowing  why,  that  her  announcement  chilled 
him ;  he  failed  at  least  to  see  why  it  should  chill  him  so 
much.  His  good  friends  had  themselves  been  visibly 
affected  by  it,  and  heaven  knew  that  the  depths  of 
brooding  fancy  in  him  were  easily  stirred  by  contact. 
If  they  had  wanted  a  crisis  they  accordingly  had  found 
one,  albeit  they  had  already  asked  leave  to  retire  before 
it.  This  he  wouldn't  have.  "Ah  no,  you  must  really 
see  !  " 

"  But  we  sha'n't  be  able  to  bear  it,  you  know,"  said 
the  young  woman,  "  if  it  -is  to  turn  you  out." 

Her  crudity  attested  her  sincerity,  and  it  was  the 
latter,  doubtless,  that  instantly  held  Mrs.  Gedge.  "  It 
is  to  turn  us  out." 

"Has  he  told  you  that,  madam?"  Mr.  Hayes  in 
quired  of  her — it  being  wondrous  how  the  breath  of 
doom  had  drawn  them  together. 

"No,  not  told  me;  but  there's  something  in  him 
there — I  mean  in  his  awful  manner — that  matches  too 
well  with  other  things.  We've  seen,"  said  the  poor 
pale  lady,  "  other  things  enough." 

The  young  woman  almost  clutched  her.  "  Is  his 
manner  very  awful?  " 

"  It's  simply  the  manner,"  Gedge  interposed,  "  of  a 
very  great  man." 

"Well,  very  great  men,"  said  his  wife,  "  are  very  aw 
ful  things." 

"  It's  exactly,"  he  laughed,  "  what  we're  finding  out! 
But  I  mustn't  keep  him  waiting.  .Our  friends  here," 
he  went  on,  "  are  directly  interested.  You  mustn't, 
mind  you,  let  them  go  until  we  know." 

307 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

Mr.  Hayes,  however,  held  him;  he  found  himself 
stayed.  "We're  so  directly  interested  that  I  want  you 
to  understand  this.  If  anything  happens " 

"  Yes?  "  said  Gedge,  all  gentle  as  he  faltered. 

"Well,  zve  must  set  you  up." 

Mrs.  Hayes  quickly  abounded.  "Oh,  do  come  to 
us  !" 

Again  he  could  but  look  at  them.  They  were  really 
wonderful  folk.  And  but  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hayes!  It 
affected  even  Isabel,  through  her  alarm;  though  the 
balm,  in  a  manner,  seemed  to  foretell  the  wound.  He 
had  reached  the  threshold  of  his  own  quarters ;  he  stood 
there  as  at  the  door  of  the  chamber  of  judgment.  But 
he  laughed;  at  least  he  could  be  gallant  in  going  up 
for  sentence.  "Very  good  then — I'll  come  to  you  !  " 

This  was  very  well,  but  it  didn't  prevent  his  heart,  a 
minute  later,  at  the  end  of  the  passage,  from  thumping 
with  beats  he  could  count.  He  had  paused  again  before 
going  in ;  on  the  other  side  of  this  second  door  his  poor 
future  was  to  be  let  loose  at  him.  It  was  broken,  at 
best,  and  spiritless,  but  wasn't  Grant-Jackson  there, 
like  a  beast-tamer  in  a  cage,  all  tights  and  spangles  and 
circus  attitudes,  to  give  it  a  cut  with  the  smart  official 
whip  and  make  it  spring  at  him?  It  was  during  this 
moment  that  he  fully  measured  the  effect  for  his  nerves 
of  the  impression  made  on  his  so  oddly  earnest  friends 
— whose  earnestness  he  in  fact,  in  the  spasm  of  this 
last  effort,  came  within  an  ace  of  resenting.  They  had 
upset  him  by  contact ;  he  was  afraid,  literally,  of  meet 
ing  his  doom  on  his  knees ;  it  wouldn't  have  taken  much 
more,  he  absolutely  felt,  to  make  him  approach  with  his 
forehead  in  the  dust  the  great  man  whose  wrath  was  to 
be  averted.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hayes  of  New  York  had 
brought  tears  to  his  eyes ;  but  was  it  to  be  reserved  for 
Grant- Jackson  to  make  him  cry  like  a  baby?  He 
wished,  yes,  while  he  palpitated,  that  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Hayes  of  New  York  hadn't  had  such  an  eccentricity 


THE   BIRTHPLACE 

of  interest,  for  it  seemed  somehow  to  come  from 
tlmn  that  he  was  going  so  fast  to  pieces.  Before 
he  turned  the  knob  of  the  door,  however,  he  had 
another  queer  instant;  making  out  that  it  had  been, 
strictly,  his  case  that  was  interesting,  his  funny  power, 
however  accidental,  to  show  as  in  a  picture  the  at 
titude  of  others — not  his  poor,  dingy  personality. 
It  was  this  latter  quantity,  none  the  less,  that  was 
marching  to  execution.  It  is  to  our  friend's  credit 
that  he  believed,  as  he  prepared  to  turn  the  knob, 
that  he  was  going  to  be  hanged;  and  it  is  certainly 
not  less  to  his  credit  that  his  wife,  on  the  chance, 
had  his  supreme  thought.  Here  it  was  that — possibly 
with  his  last  articulate  breath — he  thanked  his  stars, 
such  as  they  were,  for  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hayes  of  New 
York.  At  least  they  would  take  care  of  her. 

They  were  doing  that  certainly  with  some  success 
when,  ten  minutes  later,  he  returned  to  them.  She  sat 
between  them  in  the  beautified  Birthplace,  and  he 
couldn't  have  been  sure  afterwards  that  each  wasn't 
holding  her  hand.  The  three  together,  at  any  rate,  had 
the  effect  of  recalling  to  him — it  was  too  whimsical — 
some  picture,  a  sentimental  print,  seen  and  admired  in 
his  youth,  a  "  Waiting  for  the  Verdict,"  a  "  Counting 
the  Hours,"  or  something  of  that  sort;  humble  respect 
ability  in  suspense  about  humble  innocence.  He  didn't 
know  how  he  himself  looked,  and  he  didn't  care;  the 
great  thing  was  that  he  wasn't  crying — though  he 
might  have  been;  the  glitter  in  his  eyes  was  assuredly 
dry,  though  that  there  was  a  glitter,  or  something 
slightly  to  bewilder,  the  faces  of  the  others,  as  they 
rose  to  meet  him,  sufficiently  proved.  His  wife's  eyes 
pierced  his  own,  but  it  was  Mrs.  Hayes  of  New  York 
who  spoke.  "  Was  it  then  for  that ?  " 

He  only  looked  at  them  at  first — he  felt  he  might 
now  enjoy  it.  "  Yes,  it  was  for  '  that.'  I  mean  it  was 
about  the  way  I've  been  going  on.  He  came  to  speak 
of  it," 

309 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  And  he's  gone?  "  Mr.  Hayes  permitted  himself  to 
inquire. 

"  He's  gone." 

"  It's  over  ?  "  Isabel  hoarsely  asked. 

"  It's  over." 

''  Then  we  go?" 

This  it  was  that  he  enjoyed.  "No,  my  dear;  we 
stay." 

There  was  fairly  a  triple  gasp;  relief  took  time  to 
operate.  "  Then  why  did  he,  come?  " 

"  In  the  fulness  of  his  kind  heart  and  of  Their  dis 
cussed  and  decreed  satisfaction.  To  express  Their 
sense !" 

Mr.  Hayes  broke  into  a  laugh,  but  his  wife  wanted 
to  know.  "  Of  the  grand  work  you're  doing?  " 

"  Of  the  way  I  polish  it  off.  They're  most  hand 
some  about  it.  The  receipts,  it  appears,  speak " 

He  was  nursing  his  effect;  Isabel  intently  watched 
him,  and  the  others  hung  on  his  lips.  "  Yes, 
speak ?  " 

"  Well,  volumes.    They  tell  the  truth." 

At  this  Mr.  Hayes  laughed  again.  "  Oh,  they  at 
least  do?" 

Near  him  thus,  once  more,  Gedge  knew  their  intelli 
gence  as  one — which  was  so  good  a  consciousness  to 
get  back  that  his  tension  now  relaxed  as  by  the  snap  of 
a  spring  and  he  felt  his  old  face  at  ease.  "  So  you  can't 
say,"  he  continued,  "  that  we  don't  want  it." 

"  I  bow  to  it,"  the  young  man  smiled.  "  It's  what  I 
said  then.  It's  great" 

"  It's  great,"  said  Morris  Gedge.  "  It  couldn't  be 
greater." 

His  wife  still  watched  him ;  her  irony  hung  behind. 
"  Then  we're  just  as  we  were?  " 

"  No,  not  as  we  were." 

She  jumped  at  it.     "  Better?  " 

"  Better.     They  give  us  a  rise." 
310 


THE  BIRTHPLACE 

"Of  income?" 

"  Of  our  sweet  little  stipend — by  a  vote  of  the  Com 
mittee.  That's  what,  as  Chairman,  he  came  to  an 
nounce." 

The  very  echoes  of  the  Birthplace  were  themselves, 
for  the  instant,  hushed;  the  warden's  three  companions 
showed,  in  the  conscious  air,  a  struggle  for  their  own 
breath.  But  Isabel,  with  almost  a  shriek,  was  the  first 
to  recover  hers.  "  They  double  us  ?  " 

"  Well — call  it  that.  '  In  recognition.'  There  you 
are."  Isabel  uttered  another  sound — but  this  time  in 
articulate;  partly  beacuse  Mrs.  Hayes  of  New  York 
had  already  jumped  at  her  to  kiss  her.  Mr.  Hayes 
meanwhile,  as  with  too  much  to  say,  but  put  out  his 
hand,  which  our  friend  took  in  silence.  So  Gedge  had 
the  last  word.  "  And  there  you  are !  " 


THE   PAPERS 


THERE  was  a  longish  period — the  dense  duration 
of  a  London  winter,  cheered,  if  cheered  it  could 
be  called,  with  lurid  electric,  with  fierce  "  incandes 
cent  "  flares  and  glares — when  they  repeatedly  met,  at 
feeding-time,  in  a  small  and  not  quite  savoury  pot 
house  a  stone's  throw  from  the  Strand.  They  talked 
always  of  pot-houses,  of  feeding-time — by  which  they 
meant  any  hour  between  one  and  four  of  the  afternoon ; 
they  talked  of  most  things,  even  of  some  of  the  great 
est,  in  a  manner  that  gave,  or  that  they  desired  to  show 
as  giving,  in  respect  to  the  conditions  of  their  life,  the 
measure  of  their  detachment,  their  contempt,  their  gen 
eral  irony.  Their  general  irony,  which  they  tried  at  the 
same  time  to  keep  gay  and  to  make  amusing  at  least  to 
each  other,  was  their  refuge  from  the  want  of  savour, 
the  want  of  napkins,  the  want,  too  often,  of  shillings, 
and  of  many  things  besides  that  they  would  have  liked 
to  have.  Almost  all  they  had  with  any  security  was 
their  youth,  complete,  admirable,  very  nearly  invulner 
able,  or  as  yet  inattackable ;  for  they  didn't  count  their 
talent,  which  they  had  originally  taken  for  granted  and 
had  since  then  lacked  freedom  of  mind,  as  well  indeed 
as  any  offensive  reason,  to  reappraise.  They  were 
taken  up  with  other  questions  and  other  estimates — 
the  remarkable  limits,  for  instance,  of  their  luck,  the 
remarkable  smallness  of  the  talent  of  their  friends. 
They  were  above  all  in  that  phase  of  youth  and  in  that 

312 


THE   PAPERS 

state  of  aspiration  in  which  "  luck  "  is  the  subject  of 
most  frequent  reference,  as  definite  as  the  colour  red, 
and  in  which  it  is  the  elegant  name  for  money  when 
people  are  as  refined  as  they  are  poor.  She  was  only  a 
suburban  young  woman  in  a  sailor  hat,  and  he  a  young 
man  destitute,  in  strictness,  of  occasion  for  a  "  topper  " ; 
but  they  felt  that  they  had  in  a  peculiar  way  the  free 
dom  of  the  town,  and  the  town,  if  it  did  nothing  else, 
gave  a  range  to  the  spirit.  They  sometimes  went,  on 
excursions  that  they  groaned  at  as  professional,  far 
afield  from  the  Strand,  but  the  curiosity  with  which 
they  came  back  was  mostly  greater  than  any  other,  the 
Strand  being  for  them,  with  its  ampler  alternative  Fleet 
Street,  overwhelmingly  the  Papers,  and  the  Papers  be 
ing,  at  a  rough  guess,  all  the  furniture  of  their  con 
sciousness. 

The  Daily  Press  played  for  them  the  part  played  by 
the  embowered  nest  on  the  swaying  bough  for  the  par 
ent  birds  that  scour  the  air.  It  was,  as  they  mainly 
saw  it,  a  receptacle,  owing  its  form  to  the  instinct  more 
remarkable,  as  they  held  the  journalistic,  than  that  even 
of  the  most  highly  organised  animal,  into  which,  regu 
larly,  breathlessly,  contributions  had  to  be  dropped — 
odds  and  ends,  all  grist  to  the  mill,  all  somehow  digest 
ible  and  convertible,  all  conveyed  with  the  promptest 
possible  beak  and  the  flutter,  often,  of  dreadfully  fa 
tigued  little  wings.  If  there  had  been  no  Papers  there 
would  have  been  no  young  friends  for  us  of  the  figure 
we  hint  at,  no  chance  mates,  innocent  and  weary,  yet 
acute  even  to  penetration,  who  were  apt  to  push  off  their 
plates  and  rest  their  elbows  on  the  table  in  the  interval 
between  the  turn-over  of  the  pint-pot  and  the  call  for 
the  awful  glibness  of  their  score.  Maud  Blandy  drank 
beer — and  welcome,  as  one  may  say;  and  she  smoked 
cigarettes  when  privacy  permitted,  though  she  drew  the 
line  at  this  in  the  right  place,  just  as  she  flattered  her 
self  she  knew  how  to  draw  it,  journalistically,  where 

313 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

other  delicacies  were  concerned.  She  was  fairly  a  prod 
uct  of  the  day — so  fairly  that  she  might  have  been 
born  afresh  each  morning,  to  serve,  after  the  fashion 
of  certain  agitated  ephemeral  insects,  only  till  the  mor 
row.  It  was  as  if  a  past  had  been  wasted  on  her  and  a 
future  were  not  to  be  fitted ;  she  was  really  herself,  so 
far  at  least  as  her  great  preoccupation  went,  an  edition, 
an  "  extra  special,"  coming  out  at  the  loud  hours  and 
living  its  life,  amid  the  roar  of  vehicles,  the  hustle  of 
pavements,  the  shriek  of  newsboys,  according  to  the 
quantity  of  shock  to  be  proclaimed  and  distributed,  the 
quantity  to  be  administered,  thanks  to  the  varying  tem 
per  of  Fleet  Street,  to  the  nerves  of  the  nation.  Maud 
was  a  shocker,  in  short,  in  petticoats,  and  alike  for  the 
thoroughfare,  the  club,  the  suburban  train  and  the 
humble  home;  though  it  must  honestly  be  added  that 
petticoats  were  not  of  her  essence.  This  was  one  of 
the  reasons,  in  an  age  of  "  emancipations,"  of  her  in 
tense  actuality,  as  well  as,  positively,  of  a  good  fortune 
to  which,  however  impersonal  she  might  have  ap 
peared,  she  was  not  herself  in  a  position  to  do  full  jus 
tice;  the  felicity  of  her  having  about  her  naturally  so 
much  of  the  young  bachelor  that  she  was  saved  the  dis 
figurement  of  any  marked  straddling  or  elbowing.  It 
was  literally  true  of  her  that  she  would  have  pleased 
less,  or  at  least  have  offended  more,  had  she  been 
obliged,  or  been  prompted,  to  assert — all  too  vainly,  as 
it  would  have  been  sure  to  be — her  superiority  to  sex. 
Nature,  constitution,  accident,  whatever  we  happen  to 
call  it,  had  relieved  her  of  this  care;  the  struggle  for 
life,  the  competition  with  men,  the  taste  of  the  day,  the 
fashion  of  the  hour  had  made  her  superior,  or  had  at 
any  rate  made  her  indifferent,  and  she  had  no  difficulty 
in  remaining  so.  The  thing  was  therefore,  with  the 
aid  of  an  extreme  general  flatness  of  person,  directness 
of  step  and  simplicity  of  motive,  quietly  enough  done, 
without  a  grace,  a  weak  inconsequence,  a  stray  reminder 

314 


THE   PAPERS 

to  interfere  with  the  success ;  and  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  the  success — by  which  I  mean  the  plainness  of 
the  type — would  probably  never  have  struck  you  as  so 
great  as  at  the  moments  of  our  young  lady's  chance 
comradeship  with  Howard  Bight.  For  the  young 
man,  though  his  personal  signs  had  not,  like  his 
friend's,  especially  the  effect  of  one  of  the  stages  of  an 
evolution,  might  have  been  noted  as  not  so  fiercely 
or  so  freshly  a  male  as  to  distance  Maud  in  the  show. 
She  presented  him  in  truth,  while  they  sat  together, 
as  comparatively  girlish.  She  fell  naturally  into  gest 
ures,  tones,  expressions,  resemblances,  that  he  either 
suppressed,  from  sensibility  to  her  personal  predomi 
nance,  or  that  were  merely  latent  in  him  through  much 
taking  for  granted.  Mild,  sensitive,  none  too  solidly 
nourished,  and  condemned,  perhaps  by  a  deep  delusion 
as  to  the  final  issue  of  it,  to  perpetual  coming  and  going, 
he  was  so  resigned  to  many  things,  and  so  disgusted 
even  with  many  others,  that  the  least  of  his  cares  was 
the  cultivation  of  a  bold  front.  What  mainly  con 
cerned  him  was  its  being  bold  enough  to  get  him  his 
dinner,  and  it  was  never  more  void  of  aggression  than 
when  he  solicited  in  person  those  scraps  of  information, 
snatched  at  those  floating  particles  of  news,  on  which 
his  dinner  depended.  Had  he  had  time  a  little  more 
to  try  his  case,  he  would  have  made  out  that  if  he  liked 
Maud  Blandy  it  was  partly  by  the  impression  of  what 
she  could  do  for  him :  what  he  could  do  for  herself  had 
never  entered  into  his  head.  The  positive  quantity, 
moreover,  was  vague  to  his  mind ;  it  existed,  that  is,  for 
the  present,  but  as  the  proof  of  how,  in  spite  of  the 
want  of  encouragement,  a  fellow  could  keep  going. 
She  struck  him  in  fact  as  the  only  encouragement  he 
had,  and  this  altogether  by  example,  since  precept, 
frankly,  was  deterrent  on  her  lips,  as  speech  was  free, 
judgment  prompt,  and  accent  not  absolutely  pure. 
The  point  was  that,  as  the  easiest  thing  to  be  with 

315 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

her,  he  was  so  passive  that  it  almost  made  him  grace 
ful  and  so  attentive  that  it  almost  made  him  dis 
tinguished.  She  was  herself  neither  of  these  things, 
and  they  were  not  of  course  what  a  man  had  most 
to  be;  whereby  she  contributed  to  their  common 
view  the  impatiences  required  by  a  proper  reaction, 
forming  thus  for  him  a  kind  of  protective  hedge 
behind  which  he  could  wait.  Much  waiting,  for 
either,  was,  I  hasten  to  add,  always  in  order,  inas 
much  as  their  novitiate  seemed  to  them  interminable 
and  the  steps  of  their  ladder  fearfully  far  apart.  It 
rested — the  ladder — against  the  great  stony  wall  of 
the  public  attention — a  sustaining  mass  which  appar 
ently  wore  somewhere,  in  the  upper  air,  a  big,  thank 
less,  expressionless  face,  a  countenance  equipped  with 
eyes,  ears,  an  uplifted  nose  and  a  gaping  mouth — all 
convenient  if  they  could  only  be  reached.  The  ladder 
groaned  meanwhile,  swayed  and  shook  with  the  weight 
of  the  close-pressed  climbers,  tier  upon  tier,  occupying 
the  upper,  the  middle,  the  nethermost  rounds  and  quite 
preventing,  for  young  persons  placed  as  our  young 
friends  were  placed,  any  view  of  the  summit.  It  was 
meanwhile  moreover  only  Howard's  Bight's  perverse 
view — he  was  confessedly  perverse — that  Miss  Blandy 
had  arrived  at  a  perch  superior  to  his  own. 

She  had  hitherto  recognised  in  herself  indeed  but  a 
tighter  clutch  and  a  grimmer  purpose;  she  had  recog 
nised,  she  believed,  in  keen  moments,  a  vocation;  she 
had  recognised  that  there  had  been  eleven  of  them  at 
home,  with  herself  as  youngest,  and  distinctions  by  that 
time  so  blurred  in  her  that  she  might  as  easily  have  been 
christened  John.  She  had  recognised  truly,  most  of 
all,  that  if  they  came  to  talk  they  both  were  nowhere; 
yet  this  was  compatible  with  her  insisting  that  Howard 
had  as  yet  comparatively  had  the  luck.  When  he  wrote 
to  people  they  consented,  or  at  least  they  answered ;  al 
most  always,  for  that  matter,  they  answered  with  greed, 

316 


THE   PAPERS 

so  that  he  was  not  without  something  of  some  sort  to 
hawk  about  to  buyers.  Specimens  indeed  of  human 
greed — the  greed,  the  great  one,  the  eagerness  to  figure, 
the  snap  at  the  bait  of  publicity,  he  had  collected  in 
such  store  as  to  stock,  as  to  launch,  a  museum.  In  this 
museum  the  prize  object,  the  high  rare  specimen,  had 
been  for  some  time  established ;  a  celebrity  of  the  day 
enjoying,  uncontested,  a  glass  case  all  to  himself,  more 
conspicuous  than  any  other,  before  which  the  arrested 
visitor  might  rebound  from  surprised  recognition.  Sir 
A.  B.  C.  Beadel-Muffet  K.C.B.,  M.P.,  stood  forth  there 
as  large  as  life,  owing  indeed  his  particular  place  to  the 
shade  of  direct  acquaintance  with  him  that  Howard 
Bight  could  boast,  yet  with  his  eminent  presence  in  such 
a  collection  but  too  generally  and  notoriously  justified. 
He  was  universal  and  ubiquitous,  commemorated,  un 
der  some  rank  rubric,  on  every  page  of  every  public 
print  every  day  in  every  year,  and  as  inveterate  a  feature 
of  each  issue  of  any  self-respecting  sheet  as  the  name, 
the  date,  the  tariffed  advertisements.  He  had  always 
done  something,  or  was  about  to  do  something,  round 
which  the  honours  of  announcement  clustered,  and  in 
deed,  as  he  had  inevitably  thus  become  a  subject  of  falla 
cious  report,  one  half  of  his  chronicle  appeared  to  con 
sist  of  official  contradiction  of  the  other  half.  His  ac 
tivity — if  it  had  not  better  been  called  his  passivity — 
was  beyond  any  other  that  figured  in  the  public  eye, 
for  no  other  assuredly  knew  so  few  or  such  brief  inter- 
mittences.  Yet,  as  there  was  the  inside  as  well  as  the 
outside  view  of  his  current  history,  the  quantity  of  it 
was  easy  to  analyse  for  the  possessor  of  the  proper  cru 
cible.  Howard  Bight,  with  his  arms  on  the  table,  took 
it  apart  and  put  it  together  again  most  days  in  the  year, 
so  that  an  amused  comparison  of  notes  on  the  subject 
often  added  a  mild  spice  to  his  colloquies  with  Maud 
Blandy.  They  knew,  the  young  pair,  as  they  consid 
ered,  many  secrets,  but  they  liked  to  think  that  they 

317 


THE  BETTER  SORT 

knew  none  quite  so  scandalous  as  the  way  that,  to  put 
it  roughly,  this  distinguished  person  maintained  his 
distinction. 

It  was  known  certainly  to  all  who  had  to  do  with 
the  Papers,  a  brotherhood,  a  sisterhood  of  course  inter 
ested — for  what  was  it,  in  the  last  resort,  but  the  inter 
est  of  their  bread  and  butter?— in  shrouding  the  ap 
proaches  to  the  oracle,  in  not  telling  tales  out  of  school. 
They  all  lived  alike  on  the  solemnity,  the  sanctity  of 
the  oracle,  and  the  comings  and  goings,  the  doings  and 
undoings,  the  intentions  and  retractations  of  Sir  A.  B. 
C.  Beadel-Muffet  K.C.B.,  M.P.,  were  in  their  degree  a 
part  of  that  solemnity.  The  Papers,  taken  together 
the  glory  of  the  age,  were,  though  superficially  multi 
fold,  fundamentally  one,  so  that  any  revelation  of  their 
being  procured  or  procurable  to  float  an  object  not  in 
trinsically  buoyant  would  very  logically  convey  dis 
credit  from  the  circumference — where  the  revelation 
would  be  likely  to  be  made — to  the  centre.  Of  so  much 
as  this  our  grim  neophytes,  in  common  with  a  thousand 
others,  were  perfectly  aware ;  but  something  in  the  nat 
ure  of  their  wit,  such  as  it  was,  or  in  the  condition  of 
their  nerves,  such  as  it  easily  might  become,  sharpened 
almost  to  acerbity  their  relish  of  so  artful  an  imitation 
of  the  voice  of  fame.  The  fame  was  all  voice,  as  they 
could  guarantee  who  had  an  ear  always  glued  to  the 
speaking-tube;  the  items  that  made  the  sum  were  in 
dividually  of  the  last  vulgarity,  but  the  accumulation 
was  a  triumph — one  of  the  greatest  the  age  could  show 
— of  industry  and  vigilance.  It  was  after  all  not  true 
that  a  man  had  done  nothing  who  for  ten  years  had  so 
fed,  so  dyked  and  directed  and  distributed  the  fitful 
sources  of  publicity.  He  had  laboured,  in  his  way,  like 
a  navvy  with  a  spade ;  he  might  be  said  to  have  earned 
by  each  night's  work  the  reward,  each  morning,  of  his 
small  spurt  of  glory.  Even  for  such  a  matter  as  its 
not  being  true  that  Sir  A.  B.  C.  Beadel-Muffet  K.C.B., 

318 


THE   PAPERS 

M.P.,  was  to  start  on  his  visit  to  the  Sultan  of  Samar- 
cand  on  the  23rd,  but-  being  true  that  he  was  to  start 
on  the  29th,  the  personal  attention  required  was  no 
small  affair,  taking  the  legend  with  the  fact,  the  myth 
with  the  meaning,  the  original  artless  error  with  the 
subsequent  earnest  truth — allowing  in  fine  for  the 
statement  still  to  come  that  the  visit  would  have  to  be 
relinquished  in  consequence  of  the  visitor's  other  press 
ing  engagements,  and  bearing  in  mind  the  countless 
channels  to  be  successively  watered.  Our  young  man, 
one  December  afternoon,  pushed  an  evening  paper 
across  to  his  companion,  keeping  his  thumb  on  a  para 
graph  at  which  she  glanced  without  eagerness.  She 
might,  from  her  manner,  have  known  by  instinct  what 
it  would  be,  and  her  exclamation  had  the  note  of  satiety. 
"  Oh,  he's  working  them  now?  " 

"  If  he  has  begun  he'll  work  them  hard.  By  the 
time  that  has  gone  round  the  world  there'll  be  some 
thing  else  to  say.  '  We  are  authorised  to  state  that  the 
marriage  of  Miss  Miranda  Beadel-Muffet  to  Captain 
Guy  Devereux,  of  the  Fiftieth  Rifles,  will  not  take 
place.'  Authorised  to  state — rather!  when  every 
wire  in  the  machine  has  been  pulled  over  and  over. 
They're  authorised  to  state  something  every  day  in 
the  year,  and  the  authorisation  is  not  difficult  to  get. 
Only  his  daughters,  now  that  they're  coming  on, 
poor  things — and  I  believe  there  are  many — will 
have  to  be  chucked  into  the  pot  and  produced  on 
occasions  when  other  matter  fails.  How  pleasant  for 
them  to  find  themselves  hurtling  through  the  air, 
clubbed  by  the  paternal  hand,  like  golf-balls  in  a 
suburb!  Not  that  I  suppose  they  don't  like  it — 
why  should  one  suppose  anything  of  the  sort? " 
Howard  Bight's  impression  of  the  general  appetite 
appeared  to-day  to  be  especially  vivid,  and  he  and 
his  companion  were  alike  prompted  to  one  of  those 
slightly  violent  returns  on  themselves  and  the  work  they 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

were  doing  which  none  but  the  vulgar-minded  alto 
gether  avoid.  "  People — as  I  see  them — would  almost 
rather  be  jabbered  about  unpleasantly  than  not  be  jab 
bered  about  at  all :  whenever  you  try  them — whenever, 
at  least,  I  do — I'm  confirmed  in  that  conviction.  It 
isn't  only  that  if  one  holds  out  the  mere  tip  of  the  perch 
they  jump  at  it  like  starving  fish;  it  is  that  they  leap 
straight  out  of  the  water  themselves,  leap  in  their  thou 
sands  and  come  flopping,  open-mouthed  and  goggle- 
eyed,  to  one's  very  door.  What  is  the  sense  of  the 
French  expression  about  a  person's  making  dcs  yeux 
de  carpe?  It  suggests  the  eyes  that  a  young  newspaper 
man  seems  to  see  all  round  him,  and  I  declare  I  some 
times  feel  that,  if  one  has  the  courage  not  to  blink  at 
the  show,  the  gilt  is  a  good  deal  rubbed  off  the  ginger 
bread  of  one's  early  illusions.  They  all  do  it,  as  the 
song  is  at  the  music-halls,  and  it's  some  of  one's  sur 
prises  that  tell  one  most.  You've  thought  there  were 
some  high  souls  that  didn't  do  it — that  wouldn't,  I 
mean,  to  work  the  oracle,  lift  a  little  finger  of  their  own. 
But,  Lord  bless  you,  give  them  a  chance — you'll  find 
some  of  the  greatest  the  greediest.  I  give  you  my  word 
for  it,  I  haven't  a  scrap  of  faith  left  in  a  single  human 
creature.  Except,  of  course,"  the  young  man  added, 
"  the  grand  creature  that  you  are,  and  the  cold,  calm, 
comprehensive  one  whom  you  thus  admit  to  your  fa 
miliarity.  We  face  the  music.  We  see,  we  under 
stand;  we  know  we've  got  to  live,  and  how  we  do  it. 
But  at  least,  like  this,  alone  together,  we  take  our  in 
tellectual  revenge,  we  escape  the  indignity  of  being 
fools  dealing  with  fools.  I  don't  say  we  shouldn't  en 
joy  it  more  if  we  were.  But  it  can't  be  helped;  we 
haven't  the  gift — the  gift,  I  mean,  of  not  seeing.  We 
do  the  worst  we  can  for  the  money." 

"  You  certainly  do  the  worst  you  can,"  Maud  Blandy 
soon  replied,  "  when  you  sit  there,  with  your  wanton 
wiles,  and  take  the  spirit  out  of  me.  I  require  a  work- 

320 


THE   PAPERS 

ing  faith,  you  know.  If  one  isn't  a  fool,  in  our  world, 
where  is  one?  " 

"  Oh,  I  say !  "  her  companion  groaned  without 
alarm.  "Don't  you  fail  me,  mind  you." 

They  looked  at  each  other  across  their  clean  platters, 
and,  little  as  the  light  of  romance  seemed  superficially 
to  shine  in  them  or  about  them,  the  sense  was  visibly 
enough  in  each  of  being  involved  in  the  other.  He 
would  have  been  sharply  alone,  the  softly  sardonic 
young  man,  if  the  somewhat  dry  young  woman  hadn't 
affected  him,  in  a  way  he  was  even  too  nervous  to  put 
to  the  test,  as  saving  herself  up  for  him;  and  the  con 
sciousness  of  absent  resources  that  was  on  her  own  side 
quite  compatible  with  this  economy  grew  a  shade  or 
two  less  dismal  with  the  imagination  of  his  somehow 
being  at  costs  for  her.  It  wasn't  an  expense  of  shil 
lings—there  was  not  much  question  of  that;  what  it 
came  to  was  perhaps  nothing  more  than  that,  being,  as 
he  declared  himself,  "  in  the  know,"  he  kept  pulling  her 
in  too,  as  if  there  had  been  room  for  them  both.  He 
told  her  everything,  all  his  secrets.  He  talked  and 
talked,  often  making  her  think  of  herself  as  a  lean,  stiff 
person,  destitute  of  skill  or  art,  but  with  ear  enough  to 
be  performed  to,  sometimes  strangely  touched,  at  mo 
ments  completely  ravished,  by  a  fine  violinist.  He  was 
her  fiddler  and  genius;  she  was  sure  neither  of  her 
taste  nor  of  his  tunes,  but  if  she  could  do  nothing  else 
for  him  she  could  hold  the  case  while  he  handled  the 
instrument.  It  had  never  passed  between  them  that 
they  could  draw  nearer,  for  they  seemed  near,  near 
verily  for  pleasure,  when  each,  in  a  decent  young  life, 
was  so  much  nearer  to  the  other  than  to  anything  else. 
There  was  no  pleasure  known  to  either  that  wasn't 
further  off.  What  held  them  together  was  in  short 
that  they  were  in  the  same  boat,  a  cockle-shell  in  a  great 
rough  sea,  and  that  the  movements  required  for  keep 
ing  it  afloat  not  only  were  what  the  situation  safely 

321 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

permitted,  but  also  made  for  reciprocity  and  intimacy. 
These  talks  over  greasy  white  slabs,  repeatedly  mopped 
with  moist  grey  cloths  by  young  women  in  black  uni 
forms,  with  inexorable  braided  "  buns  "  in  the  nape  of 
weak  necks,  these  sessions,  sometimes  prolonged,  in 
halls  of  oilcloth,  among  penal-looking  tariffs  and  pyra 
mids  of  scones,  enabled  them  to  rest  on  their  oars ;  the 
more  that  they  were  on  terms  with  the  whole  families, 
chartered  companies,  of  food-stations,  each  a  race  of 
innumerable  and  indistinguishable  members,  and  had 
mastered  those  hours  of  comparative  elegance,  the 
earlier  and  the  later,  when  the  little  weary  ministrants 
were  limply  sitting  down  and  the  occupants  of  the  red 
benches  bleakly  interspaced.  So  it  was,  that,  at  times, 
they  renewed  their  understanding,  and  by  signs,  man 
nerless  and  meagre,  that  would  have  escaped  the  notice 
of  witnesses.  Maud  Blandy  had  no  need  to  kiss  her 
hand  across  to  him  to  show  she  felt  what  he  meant;  she 
had  moreover  never  in  her  life  kissed  her  hand  to  any 
one,  and  her  companion  couldn't  have  imagined  it  of 
her.  His  romance  was  so  grey  that  it  wasn't  romance 
at  all ;  it  was  a  reality  arrived  at  without  stages,  shades, 
forms.  If  he  had  been  ill  or  stricken  she  would  have 
taken  him — other  resources  failing — into  her  lap;  but 
would  that,  which  would  scarce  even  have  been  mother 
ly,  have  been  romantic  ?  She  nevertheless  at  this  mo 
ment  put  in  her  plea  for  the  general  element.  "  I  can't 
help  it,  about  Beadel-Muffet ;  it's  too  magnificent — it 
appeals  to  me.  And  then  I've  a  particular  feeling  about 
him — I'm  waiting  to  see  what  will  happen.  It  is  genius, 
you  know,  to  get  yourself  so  celebrated  for  nothing — to 
carry  out  your  idea  in  the  face  of  everything.  I  mean 
your  idea  of  being  celebrated.  It  isn't  as  if  he  had  done 
even  one  little  thing.  What  has  he  done  when  you  come 
to  look?" 

"  Why,  my  dear  chap,  he  has  done  everything.     He 
has  missed  nothing.     He  has  been  in  everything,  of 

322 


THE   PAPERS 

everything,  at  everything,  over  everything,  under 
everything,  that  has  taken  place  for  the  last  twenty 
years.  He's  always  present,  and,  though  he  never 
makes  a  speech,  he  never  fails  to  get  alluded  to  in  the 
speeches  of  others.  That's  doing  it  cheaper  than  any 
one  else  does  it,  but  it's  thoroughly  doing  it — which  is 
what  we're  talking  about.  And  so  far,"  the  young 
man  contended,  "  from  its  being  '  in  the  face  '  of  any 
thing,  it's  positively  with  the  help  of  everything,  since 
the  Papers  are  everything  and  more.  They're  made 
for  such  people,  though  no  doubt  he's  the  person  who 
has  known  best  how  to  use  them.  I've  gone  through 
one  of  the  biggest  sometimes,  from  beginning  to  end- 
it's  quite  a  thrilling  little  game — to  catch  him  once  out. 
It  has  happened  to  me  to  think  I  was  near  it  when,  on 
the  last  column  of  the  last  page — I  count  '  advertise 
ments,'  heaven  help  us,  out  ! — I've  found  him  as  large 
as  life  and  as  true  as  the  needle  to  the  pole.  But  at 
last,  in  a  way,  it  goes,  it  can't  help  going,  of  itself.  He 
comes  in,  he  breaks  out,  of  himself;  the  letters,  under 
the  compositor's  hand,  form  themselves,  from  the  force 
of  habit,  into  his  name — any  connection  for  it,  any 
context,  being  as  good  as  any  other,  and  the  wind, 
which  he  has  originally  '  raised,'  but  which  continues 
to  blow,  setting  perpetually  in  his  favour.  The  thing 
would  really  be  now,  don't  you  see,  for  him  to  keep 
himself  out.  That  would  be,  on  my  honour,  it  strikes 
me — his  getting  himself  out — the  biggest  fact  in  his 
record." 

The  girl's  attention,  as  her  friend  developed  the  pict 
ure,  had  become  more  present.  "  He  can't  get  him 
self  out.  There  he  is."  She  had  a  pause ;  she  had  been 
thinking.  "  That's  just  my  idea." 

"  Your  idea  ?  Well,  an  idea's  always  a  blessing. 
What  do  you  want  for  it?  " 

She  continued  to  turn  it  over  as  if  weighing  its 
value.  "  Something  perhaps  could  be  done  with  it — 
only  it  would  take  imagination." 

323 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

He  wondered,  and  she  seemed  to  wonder  that  he 
didn't  see.  "  Is  it  a  situation  for  a  '  ply  '?  " 

"  No,  it's  too  good  for  a  ply — yet  it  isn't  quite  good 
enough  for  a  short  story." 

"  It  would  do  then  for  a  novel?  " 

"  Well,  I  seem  to  see  it,"  Maud  said — "  and  with  a 
lot  in  it  to  be  got  out.  But  I  seem  to  see  it  as  a  ques 
tion  not  of  what  you  or  I  might  be  able  to  do  with  it, 
but  of  what  the  poor  man  himself  may.  That's  what 
I  meant  just  now,"  she  explained,  "  by  my  having  a 
creepy  sense  of  what  may  happen  for  him.  It  has  al 
ready  more  than  once  occurred  to  me.  Then,"  she 
wound  up,  "  we  shall  have  real  life,  the  case  itself." 

"Do  you  know  youve  got  imagination?"  Her 
friend,  rather  interested,  appeared  by  this  time  to  have 
seized  her  thought. 

"  I  see  him  having  for  some  reason,  very  imperative, 
to  seek  retirement,  lie  low,  to  hide,  in  fact,  like  a  man 
'  wanted,'  but  pursued  all  the  while  by  the  lurid  glare 
that  he  has  himself  so  started  and  kept  up,  and  at  last 
literally  devoured  ('  like  Frankenstein,'  of  course !)  by 
the  monster  he  has  created." 

"  I  say,  you  have  got  it  !  " — and  the  young  man 
flushed,  visibly,  artistically,  with  the  recognition  of  ele 
ments  which  his  eyes  had  for  a  minute  earnestly  fixed. 
"  But  it  will  take  a  lot  of  doing." 

"  Oh,"  said  Maud,  "  we  sha'n't  have  to  do  it.  He'll 
do  it  himself." 

"  I  wonder."  Howard  Bight  really  wondered.  "  The 
fun  would  be  for  him  to  do  it  for  us.  I  mean  for  him  to 
want  us  to  help  him  somehow  to  get  out." 

"  Oh,  '  us  ' !  "  the  girl  mournfully  sighed. 

"  Why  not,  when  he  comes  to  us  to  get  in?  " 

Maud  Blandy  stared.  "  Do  you  mean  to  you  per 
sonally?  You  surely  know  by  this  time  that  no  one 
ever  '  comes  '  to  me." 

"  Why,  I  went  to  him  in  the  first  instance;  I  made  up 

324 


THE   PAPERS 

to  him  straight,  I  did  him  '  at  home/  somewhere,  as 
I've  surely  mentioned  to  you  before,  three  years  ago. 
He  liked,  I  believe — for  he's  really  a  delightful  old  ass — 
the  way  I  did  it ;  he  knows  my  name  and  has  my  ad 
dress,  and  has  written  me  three  or  four  times  since, 
with  his  own  hand,  a  request  to  be  so  good  as  to  make 
use  of  my  (he  hopes)  still  close  connection  with  the 
daily  Press  to  rectify  the  rumour  that  he  has  recon 
sidered  his  opinion  on  the  subject  of  the  blankets  sup 
plied  to  the  Upper  Tooting  Workhouse  Infirmary. 
He  has  reconsidered  his  opinion  on  no  subject  what 
ever — which  he  mentions,  in  the  interest  of  historic 
truth,  without  further  intrusion  on  my  valuable  time. 
And  he  regards  that  sort  of  thing  as  a  commodity 
that  I  can  dispose  of — thanks  to  my  '  close  connection  ' 
— for  several  shillings." 

"And  can  you?" 

"  Not  for  several  pence.  They're  all  tariffed,  but 
he's  tariffed  low — having  a  value,  apparently,  that 
money  doesn't  represent.  He's  always  welcome,  but  he 
isn't  always  paid  for.  The  beauty,  however,  is  in  his 
marvellous  memory,  his  keeping  us  all  so  apart  and  not 
muddling  the  fellow  to  whom  he  has  written  that  he 
hasn't  done  this,  that  or  the  other  with  the  fellow  to 
whom  he  has  written  that  he  has.  He'll  write  to  me 
again  some  day  about  something  else — about  his  al 
leged  position  on  the  date  of  the  next  school-treat  of 
the  Chelsea  Cabmen's  Orphanage.  I  shall  seek  a  market 
for  the  precious  item,  and  that  will  keep  us  in  touch ;  so 
that  if  the  complication  you  have  the  sense  of  it  in  your 
bones  does  come  into  play — the  thought's  too  beauti 
ful! — he  may  once  more  remember  me.  Fancy  his 
coming  to  one  with  a  '  What  can  you  do  for  me  now?  ' 
Bight  lost  himself  in  the  happy  vision ;  it  gratified  so  his 
cherished  consciousness  of  the  "  irony  of  fate  " — a  con 
sciousness  so  cherished  that  he  never  could  write  ten 
lines  without  use  of  the  words. 

325 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

Maud  showed  however  at  this  point  a  reserve  which 
appeared  to  have  grown  as  the  possibility  opened  out. 
"  I  believe  in  it — it  must  come.  It  can't  not.  It's  the 
only  end.  He  doesn't  know;  nobody  knows — the 
simple-minded  all :  only  you  and  I  know.  But  it  won't 
be  nice,  remember." 

"  It  won't  be  funny?  " 

"  It  will  be  pitiful.    There'll  have  to  be  a  reason." 

"For  his  turning  round?"  the  young  man  nursed  the 
vision.  "  More  or  less — I  see  what  you  mean.  But 
except  for  a  '  ply  '  will  that  so  much  matter  ?  His  rea 
son  will  concern  himself.  What  will  concern  us  will  be 
his  funk  and  his  helplessness,  his  having  to  stand  there 
in  the  blaze,  with  nothing  and  nobody  to  put  it  out. 
We  shall  see  him,  shrieking  for  a  bucket  of  water, 
wither  up  in  the  central  flame." 

Her  look  had  turned  sombre.  "  It  makes  one  cruel. 
That  is  it  makes  you.  I  mean  our  trade  does." 

"  I  dare  say — I  see  too  much.  But  I'm  willing  to 
chuck  it." 

"  Well,"  she  presently  replied,  "  I'm  not  willing  to, 
but  it  seems  pretty  well  on  the  cards  that  I  shall  have 
to.  /  don't  see  too  much.  I  don't  see  enough.  So, 
for  all  the  good  it  does  me !  " 

She  had  pushed  back  her  chair  and  was  looking 
round  for  her  umbrella.  "  Why,  what's  the  matter?  " 
Howard  Bight  too  blankly  inquired. 

She  met  his  eyes  while  she  pulled  on  her  rusty  old 
gloves.  "  Well,  I'll  tell  you  another  time." 

He  kept  his  place,  still  lounging,  contented  where 
she  had  again  become  restless.  "  Don't  you  call  it  see 
ing  enough  to  see — to  have  had  so  luridly  revealed  to 
you — the  doom  of  Beadel-MufYet  ?  " 

"  Oh,  he's  not  my  business,  he's  yours.  You're  his 
man,  or  one  of  his  men — he'll  come  back  to  you.  Be 
sides,  he's  a  special  case,  and,  as  I  say,  I'm  too  sorry 
for  him." 

326 


THE   PAPERS 

"That's  a  proof  then  of  what  you  do  see." 
Her  silence  for  a  moment  admitted  it,  though  evi 
dently  she  was  making,  for  herself,  a  distinction,  which 
she  didn't  express.     "  I  don't  then  see  what  I  want, 
what  I  require.     And  he"  she  added,  "  if  he  does  have 
some  reason,  will  have  to  have  an  awfully  strong  one. 
To  be  strong  enough  it  will  have  to  be  awful." 
"  You  mean  he'll  have  done  something?  " 
'  Yes,  that  may  remain  undiscovered  if  he  can  only 
drop  out  of  the  papers,  sit  for  a  while  in  darkness. 
You'll  know  what  it  is ;  you'll  not  be  able  to  help  your 
self.    But  I  sha'n't  want  to,  for  anything." 

She  had  got  up  as  she  said  it,  and  he  sat  looking  at 
her,  thanks  to  her  odd  emphasis,  with  an  interest  that, 
as  he  also  rose,  passed  itself  off  as  a  joke.  "  Ah,  then, 
you  sweet  sensitive  thing,  I  promise  to  keep  it  from 
you." 

II 

THEY  met  again  a  few  days  later,  and  it  seemed  the  law 
of  their  meetings  that  these  should  take  place  mainly 
within  moderate  eastward  range  of  Charing  Cross. 
An  afternoon  performance  of  a  play  translated  from  the 
Finnish,  already  several  times  given,  on  a  series  of  Sat 
urdays,  had  held  Maud  for  an  hour  in  a  small,  hot, 
dusty  theatre  where  the  air  hung  as  heavy  about  the 
great  "  trimmed  "  and  plumed  hats  of  the  ladies  as  over 
the  flora  and  fauna  of  a  tropical  forest ;  at  the  end  of 
which  she  edged  out  of  her  stall  in  the  last  row,  to  join 
a  small  band  of  unattached  critics  and  correspondents, 
spectators  with  ulterior  views  and  pencilled  shirtcuffs, 
who,  coming  together  in  the  lobby  for  an  exchange  of 
ideas,  were  ranging  from  "Awful  rot  "  to  "  Rather 
jolly."  Ideas,  of  this  calibre,  rumbled  and  flashed,  so 
that,  lost  in  the  discussion,  our  young  woman  failed  at 
first  to  make  out  that  a  gentleman  on  the  other  side  of 

327 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

the  group,  but  standing  a  little  off,  had  his  eyes  on  her 
for  some  extravagant,  though  apparently  quite  respect 
able,  purpose.  He  had  been  waiting  for  her  to  recog 
nise  him,  and  as  soon  as  he  had  caught  her  attention  he 
came  round  to  her  with  an  eager  bow.  She  had  by  this 
time  entirely  placed  him — placed  him  as  the  smoothest 
and  most  shining  subject  with  which,  in  the  exercise  of 
her  profession,  she  had  yet  experimented;  but  her  rec 
ognition  was  accompanied  with  a  pang  that  his  ami 
able  address  made  but  the  sharper.  She  had  her  reason 
for  awkwardness  in  the  presence  of  a  rosy,  glossy, 
kindly,  but  discernibly  troubled  personage  whom  she 
had  waited  on  "at  home  "  at  her  own  suggestion — 
promptly  welcomed — and  the  sympathetic  element  in 
whose  "  personality,"  the  Chippendale,  the  photograph 
ic,  the  autographic  elements  in  whose  flat  in  the  Earl's 
Court  Road,  she  had  commemorated  in  the  liveliest 
prose  of  which  she  was  capable.  She  had  described 
with  humour  his  favourite  pug,  she  had  revealed  with 
permission  his  favourite  make  of  Kodak,  she  had 
touched  upon  his  favourite  manner  of  spending  his 
Sundays  and  had  extorted  from  him  the  shy  confession 
that  he  preferred  after  all  the  novel  of  adventure  to 
the  novel  of  subtlety.  Her  embarrassment  was  there 
fore  now  the  greater  as,  touching  to  behold,  he  so 
clearly  had  approached  her  with  no  intention  of  asper 
ity,  not  even  at  first  referring  at  all  to  the  matter  that 
couldn't  have  been  gracefully  explained. 

She  had  seen  him  originally — had  had  the  instinct  of 
it  in  making  up  to  him — as  one  of  the  happy  of  the 
earth,  and  the  impression  of  him  "  at  home,"  on  his 
proving  so  goodnatured  about  the  interview,  had  begot 
ten  in  her  a  sharper  envy,  a  hungrier  sense  of  the  in 
vidious  distinctions  of  fate,  than  any  her  literary  con 
science,  which  she  deemed  rigid,  had  yet  had  to  reckon 
with.  He  must  have  been  rich,  rich  by  such  estimates 
as  hers ;  he  at  any  rate  had  everything,  while  she  had 

328 


THE   PAPERS 

nothing — nothing  but  the  vulgar  need  of  offering  him 
to  brag,  on  his  behalf,  for  money,  if  she  could  get  it, 
about  his  luck.  She  hadn't  in  fact  got  money,  hadn't 
so  much  as  managed  to  work  in  her  stuff  anywhere ;  a 
practical  comment  sharp  enough  on  her  having  repre 
sented  to  him — with  wasted  pathos,  she  was  indeed 
soon  to  perceive — how  "  important  "  it  was  to  her  that 
people  should  let  her  get  at  them.  This  dim  celebrity 
had  not  needed  that  argument;  he  had  not  only,  with 
his  alacrity,  allowed  her,  as  she  had  said,  to  try  her 
hand,  but  had  tried  with  her,  quite  feverishly,  and  all 
to  the  upshot  of  showing  her  that  there  were  even 
greater  outsiders  than  herself.  He  could  have  put 
down  money,  could  have  published,  as  the  phrase  was — 
a  bare  two  columns — at  his  own  expense;  but  it  was 
just  a  part  of  his  rather  irritating  luxury  that  he  had  a 
scruple  about  that,  wanted  intensely  to  taste  the  sweet, 
but  didn't  want  to  owe  it  to  any  wire-pulling.  He 
wanted  the  golden  apple  straight  from  the  tree,  where 
it  yet  seemed  so  unable  to  grow  for  him  by  any  exuber 
ance  of  its  own.  He  had  breathed  to  her  his  real  secret 
— that  to  be  inspired,  to  work  with  effect,  he  had  to 
feel  he  was  appreciated,  to  have  it  all  somehow  come 
back  to  him.  The  artist,  necessarily  sensitive,  lived  on 
encouragement,  on  knowing  and  being  reminded  that 
people  cared  for  him  a  little,  cared  even  just  enough  to 
flatter  him  a  wee  bit.  They  had  talked  that  over,  and 
he  had  really,  as  he  called  it,  quite  put  himself  in  her 
power.  He  had  whispered  in  her  ear  that  it  might  be 
very  weak  and  silly,  but  that  positively  to  be  himself, 
to  do  anything,  certainly  to  do  his  best,  he  required  the 
breath  of  sympathy.  He  did  love  notice,  let  alone 
praise — there  it  was.  To  be  systematically  ignored — 
well,  blighted  him  at  the  root.  He  was  afraid  she 
would  think  he  had  said  too  much,  but  she  left  him 
with  his  leave,  none  the  less,  to  repeat  a  part  of  it.  They 
had  agreed  that  she  was  to  bring  in  prettily,  somehow, 

329 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

that  he  did  love  praise ;  for  just  the  right  way  he  was 
sure  he  could  trust  to  her  taste. 

She  had  promised  to  send  him  the  interview  in  proof, 
but  she  had  been  able,  after  all,  to  send  it  but  in  type- 
copy.  If  she,  after  all,  had  had  a  flat  adorned — as  to 
the  drawing-room  alone — with  eighty-three  photo 
graphs,  and  all  in  plush  frames ;  if  she  had  lived  in  the 
Earl's  Court  Road,  had  been  rosy  and  glossy  and  well 
filled  out;  and  if  she  had  looked  withal,  as  she  always 
made  a  point  of  calling  it  when  she  wished  to  refer 
without  vulgarity  to  the  right  place  in  the  social  scale, 
"  unmistakeably  gentle  " — if  she  had  achieved  these 
things  she  would  have  snapped  her  fingers  at  all  other 
sweets,  have  sat  as  tight  as  possible  and  let  the  world 
wag,  have  spent  her  Sundays  in  silently  thanking  her 
stars,  and  not  have  cared  to  know  one  Kodak,'  or  even 
one  novelist's  "  methods,"  from  another.  Except  for 
his  unholy  itch  he  was  in  short  so  just  the  person  she 
would  have  liked  to  be  that  the  last  consecration  was 
given  for  her  to  his  character  by  his  speaking  quite  as  if 
he  had  accosted  her  only  to  secure  her  view  of  the 
strange  Finnish  "  soul."  He  had  come  each  time — 
there  had  been  four  Saturdays ;  whereas  Maud  herself 
had  had  to  wait  till  to-day,  though  her  bread  depended 
on  it,  for  the  roundabout  charity  of  her  publicly  bad 
seat.  It  didn't  matter  why  he  had  come — so  that  he 
might  see  it  somewhere  printed  of  him  that  he  was  "  a 
conspicuously  faithful  attendant  "  at  the  interesting 
series;  it  only  mattered  that  he  was  letting  her  off  so 
easily,  and  yet  that  there  was  a  restless  hunger,  odd  on 
the  part  of  one  of  the  filled-out,  in  his  appealing  eye, 
which  she  now  saw  not  to  be  a  bit  intelligent,  though 
that  didn't  matter  either.  Howard  Bight  came  into 
view  while  she  dealt  with  these  impressions,  whereupon 
she  found  herself  edging  a  little  away  from  her  patron. 
Her  other  friend,  who  had  but  just  arrived  and  was  ap 
parently  waiting  to  speak  to  her,  would  be  a  pretext  for 

330 


THE   PAPERS 

a  break  before  the  poor  gentleman  should  begin  to  ac 
cuse  her  of  having  failed  him.  She  had  failed  herself 
so  much  more  that  she  would  have  been  ready  to  reply 
to  him  that  he  was  scarce  the  one  to  complain ;  fortu 
nately,  however,  the  bell  sounded  the  end  of  the  inter 
val  and  her  tension  was  relaxed.  They  all  flocked 
back  to  their  places,  and  her  camarade — she  knew 
enough  often  so  to  designate  him — was  enabled,  thanks 
to  some  shifting  of  other  spectators,  to  occupy  a  seat 
beside  her.  He  had  brought  with  him  the  breath  of 
business;  hurrying  from  one  appointment  to  another 
he  might  have  time  but  for  a  single  act.  He  had  seen 
each  of  the  others  by  itself,  and  the  way  he  now 
crammed  in  the  third,  after  having  previously  snatched 
the  fourth,  brought  home  again  to  the  girl  that  he  was 
leading  the  real  life.  Her  own  was  a  dull  imitation  of 
it.  Yet  it  happened  at  the  same  time  that  before  the 
curtain  rose  again  he  had,  with  a  "  Who's  your  fat 
friend  ?  "  professed  to  have  caught  he.  in  the  act  of 
making  her  own  brighter. 

"  '  Mortimer  Marshal '  ?  "  he  echoed  after  she  had, 
a  trifle  dryly,  satisfied  him.  "  Never  heard  of  him." 

"  Well,  I  sha'n't  tell  him  that.  But  you  have"  she 
said ;  "  you've  only  forgotten.  I  told  you  after  I  had 
been  to  him." 

Her  friend  thought — it  came  back  to  him.  "  Oh 
yes,  and  showed  me  what  you  had  made  of  it.  I  re 
member  your  stuff  was  charming." 

"  I  see  you  remember  nothing,"  Maud  a  little  more 
dryly  said.  "  I  didn't  show  you  what  I  had  made  of  it. 
I've  never  made  anything.  You've  not  seen  my  stuff, 
and  nobody  has.  They  won't  have  it." 

She  spoke  with  a  smothered  vibration,  but,  as  they 
were  still  waiting,  it  had  made  him  look  at  her;  by 
which  she  was  slightly  the  more  disconcerted.  "  Who 
won't?" 

"  Everyone,    everything    won't.     Nobody,    nothing 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

will.  He's  hopeless^  or  rather  /  am.  I'm  no  good. 
And  he  knows  it." 

"O — oh  !  "  the  young  man  kindly  but  vaguely  pro 
tested.  "  Has  he  been  making  that  remark  to  you  ?  " 

"  No — that's  the  worst  of  it.  He's  too  dreadfully 
civil.  He  thinks  I  can  do  something." 

"  Then  why  do  you  say  he  knows  you  can't." 

She  was  impatient;  she  gave  it  up.  "  Well,  I  don't 
know  what  he  knows — except  that  he  does  want  to  be 
loved." 

"  Do  you  mean  he  has  proposed  to  you  to  love  him  ?  " 

"  Loved  by  the  great  heart  of  the  public — speaking 
through  its  natural  organ.  He  wants  to  be — well, 
where  Beadel-MufTet  is." 

"Oh,  I  hope  not  !  "  said  Bight  with  grim  amuse 
ment. 

His  friend  was  struck  with  his  tone.  "  Do  you 
mean  it's  coming  on  for  Beadel-MufTet — what  we  talked 
about  ?  "  And  then  as  he  looked  at  her  so  queerly  that 
her  curiosity  took  a  jump :  "  It  really  and  truly  is? 
Has  anything  happened  ?  " 

"  The  rummest  thing  in  the  world — since  I  last  saw 
you.  We're  wonderful,  you  know,  you  and  I  together 
— we  see.  And  what  we  see  always  takes  place,  usually 
within  the  week.  It  wouldn't  be  believed.  But  it  will 
do  for  us.  At  any  rate  it's  high  sport." 

"  Do  you  mean,"  she  asked,  "  that  his  scare  has  liter 
ally  begun?  " 

He  meant,  clearly,  quite  as  much  as  he  said.  "  He 
has  written  to  me  again  he  wants  to  see  me,'  and  we've 
an  appointment  for  Monday." 

"  Then  why  isn't  it  the  old  game?  " 

"  Because  it  isn't.  He  wants  to  gather  from  me,  as 
I  have  served  him  before,  if  something  can't  be  done. 
On  a  souvent  besoin  d'un  plus  petit  que  soi.  Keep  quiet, 
and  we  shall  see  something." 

This  was  very  well ;  only  his  manner  visibly  had  for 

332 


THE   PAPERS 

her  the  effect  of  a  chill  in  the  air.  "  I  hope,"  she  said, 
"  you're  going  at  least  to  be  decent  to  him." 

"Well,  you'll  judge.  Nothing  at  all  can  be  done — 
it's  too  ridiculously  late.  And  it  serves  him  right.  I 
sha'n't  deceive  him,  certainly,  but  I  might  as  well  en 
joy  him." 

The  fiddles  were  still  going,  and  Maud  had  a  pause. 
"Well,  you  know  you've  more  or  less  lived  on  him.  I 
mean  it's  the  kind  of  thing  you  are  living  on." 

"  Precisely — that's  just  why  I  loathe  it." 

Again  she  hesitated.  "  You  mustn't  quarrel,  you 
know,  with  your  bread  and  butter." 

He  looked  straight  before  him,  as  if  she  had  been 
consciously,  and  the  least  bit  disagreeably,  sententious. 
"What  in  the  world's  that  but  what  I  shall  just  be  not 
doing?  If  our  bread  and  butter  is  the  universal  push  I 
consult  our  interest  by  not  letting  it  trifle  with  us. 
They're  not  to  blow  hot  and  cold — it  won't  do.  There 
he  is — let  him  get  out  himself.  What  I  call  sport  is  to 
see  if  he  can." 

"And  not — poor  wretch — to  help  him  ?  " 

But  Bight  was  ominously  lucid.  "  The  devil  is  that 
he  can't  be  helped.  His  one  idea  of  help,  from  the  day 
he  opened  his  eyes,  has  been  to  be  prominently — damn 
the  word ! — mentioned :  it's  the  only  kind  of  help  that 
exists  in  connection  with  him.  What  therefore  is  a 
fellow  to  do  when  he  happens  to  want  it  to  stop — wants 
a  special  sort  of  prominence  that  will  work  like  a  trap  in 
a  pantomime  and  enable  him  to  vanish  when  the  situa 
tion  requires  it  ?  Is  one  to  mention  that  he  wants  not 
to  be  mentioned — never,  never,  please,  any  more  ?  Do 
you  see  the  success  of  that,  all  over  the  place,  do  you  see 
the  headlines  in  the  American  papers?  No,  he  must 
die  as  he  has  lived — the  Principal  Public  Person  of  his 
time." 

"Well,"  she  sighed,  "  it's  all  horrible."  And  then 
without  a  transition :  "What  do  you  suppose  has  hap 
pened  to  him?*" 

333 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  The  dreadfulness  I  wasn't  to  tell  you  ?  " 

"  I  only  mean  if  you  suppose  him  in  a  really  bad 
hole." 

The  young  man  considered.  "  It  can't  certainly  be 
that  he  has  had  a  change  of  heart — never.  It  may  be 
nothing  worse  than  that  the  woman  he  wants  to  marry 
has  turned  against  it." 

"  But  I  supposed  him — with  his  children  all  so 
boomed — to  be  married." 

"  Naturally ;  else  he  couldn't  have  got  such  a  boom 
from  the  poor  lady's  illness,  death  and  burial.  Don't 
you  remember  two  years  ago? — '  We  are  given  to  un- 
stand  that  Sir  A.  B.  C.  Beadel-Muffet  K.C.B.,  M.P.,  par 
ticularly  desires  that  no  flowers  be  sent  for  the  late 
Hon.  Lady  Beadel-Muffet's  funeral.'  And  then,  the 
next  day :  '  We  are  authorised  to  state  that  the  im 
pression,  so  generally  prevailing,  that  Sir  A.  B.  C. 
Beadel-Muffet  has  expressed  an  objection  to  flowers  in 
connection  with  the  late  Hon.  Lady  Beadel-Muffet's 
obsequies,  rests  on  a  misapprehension  of  Sir  A.  B.  C. 
Beadel-Muffet's  markedly  individual  views.  The  floral 
tributes  already  delivered  in  Queen's  Gate  Gardens,  and 
remarkable  for  number  and  variety,  have  been  the 
source  of  such  gratification  to  the  bereaved  gentleman 
as  his  situation  permits.'  With  a  wind-up  of  course 
for  the  following  week — the  inevitable  few  heads  of  re 
mark,  on  the  part  of  the  bereaved  gentleman,  on  the 
general  subject  of  Flowers  at  Funerals  as  a  Fashion, 
vouchsafed,  under  pressure  possibly  indiscreet,  to  a  ris 
ing  young  journalist  always  thirsting  for  the  authentic 
word." 

"  I  guess  now,"  said  Maud,  after  an  instant,  "  the 
rising  young  journalist.  You  egged  him  on." 

"  Dear,  no.     I  panted  in  his  rear." 

"  It  makes  you,"  she  added,  "  more  than  cynical." 

"  And  what  do  you  call '  more  than  '  cynical?  " 

"  It  makes  you  sardonic.  Wicked,"  she  continued; 
"  devilish." 

334 


THE   PAPERS 

"  That's  it — that  is  cynical.  Enough's  as  good  as  a 
feast."  But  he  came  back  to  the  ground  they  had 
quitted.  "What  were  you  going  to  say  he's  prominent 
for,  Mortimer  Marshal  ?  " 

She  wouldn't,  however,  follow  him  there  yet,  her 
curiosity  on  the  other  issue  not  being  spent.  "  Do  you 
know  then  as  a  fact,  that  he's  marrying  again,  the  be 
reaved  gentleman?" 

Her  friend,  at  this,  showed  impatience.  "  My  dear 
fellow,  do  you  see  nothing  ?  We  had  it  all,  didn't  we, 
three  months  ago,  and  then  we  didn't  have  it,  and  then 
we  had  it  again;  and  goodness  knows  where  we  are. 
But  I  throw  out  the  possibility.  I  forget  her  bloated 
name,  but  she  may  be  rich,  and  she  may  be  decent.  She 
may  make  it  a  condition  that  he  keeps  out — out,  I 
mean,  of  the  only  things  he  has  really  ever  been  '  in.' ' 

1  The  Papers?" 

"  The  dreadful,  nasty,  vulgar  Papers.  She  may  put 
it  to  him — I  see  it  dimly  and  queerly,  but  I  see  it — that 
he  must  get  out  first,  and  then  they'll  talk;  then  she'll 
say  yes,  then  he'll  have  the  money.  I  see  it — and  much 
more  sharply — that  he  wants  the  money,  needs  it  I 
mean,  badly,  desperately,  so  that  this  necessity  may 
very  well  make  the  hole  in  which  he  finds  himself. 
Therefore  he  must  do  something — what  he's  trying  to 
do.  It  supplies  the  motive  that  our  picture,  the  other 
day,  rather  missed." 

Maud  Blandy  took  this  in,  but  it  seemed  to  fail  to 
satisfy  her.  "  It  must  be  something  worse.  You  make 
it  out  that,  so  that  your  practical  want  of  mercy,  which 
you'll  not  be  able  to  conceal  from  me,  shall  affect  me  as 
less  inhuman." 

"  I  don't  make  it  out  anything,  and  I  don't  care  what 
it  is ;  the  queerness,  the  grand  '  irony  '  of  the  case  is  it 
self  enough  for  me.  You,  on  your  side,  however,  I 
think,  make  it  out  what  you  call '  something  worse,'  be 
cause  of  the  romantic  bias  of  your  mind.  You  '  see 

335 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

red.'  Yet  isn't  it,  after  all,  sufficiently  lurid  that  he 
shall  lose  his  blooming  bride?" 

"You're  sure,"  Maud  appealed,  "that  he'll  lose 
her?" 

"  Poetic  justice  screams  for  it ;  and  my  whole  inter 
est  in  the  matter  is  staked  on  it." 

But  the  girl  continued  to  brood.  "  I  thought  you 
contend  that  nobody's  half  '  decent.'  Where  do  you 
find  a  woman  to  make  such  a  condition  ?  " 

"  Not  easily,  I  admit."  The  young  man  thought. 
"  It  will  be  his  luck  to  have  found  her.  That's  his 
tragedy,  say,  that  she  can  financially  save  him,  but  that 
she  happens  to  be  just  the  one  freak,  the  creature  whose 
stomach  has  turned.  The  spark — I  mean  of  decency — 
has  got,  after  all,  somehow  to  be  kept  alive ;  and  it  may 
be  lodged  in  this  particular  female  form." 

"  I  see.  But  why  should  a  female  form  that's  so 
particular  confess  to  an  affinity  with  a  male  form  that's 
so  fearfully  general?  As  he's  all  self-advertisement, 
why  isn't  it  much  more  natural  to  her  simply  to  loathe 
him?" 

"  Well,  because,  oddly  enough,  it  seems  that  people 
don't." 

"  You  do,"  Maud  declared.     "  You'll  kill  him." 

He  just  turned  a  flushed  cheek  to  her,  and  she  saw 
that  she  had  touched  something  that  lived  in  him. 
"We  can,"  he  consciously  smiled,  "  deal  death.  And 
the  beauty  is  that  it's  in  a  perfectly  straight  way.  We 
can  lead  them  on.  But  have  you  ever  seen  Beadel- 
Muffet  for  yourself?  "  he  continued. 

"  No.  How  often,  please,  need  I  tell  you  that  I've 
seen  nobody  and  nothing?  " 

"Well,  if  you  had  you'd  understand." 

"You  mean  he's  so  fetching?" 

"  Oh,  he's  great.  He's  not '  all '  self-advertisement — 
or  at  least  he  doesn't  seem  to  be :  that's  his  pull.  But  I 
see,  you  female  humbug,"  Bight  pursued,  "  how  much 
you'd  like  him  yourself." 

336 


THE   PAPERS 

"  I  want,  while  I'm  about  it,  to  pity  him  in  sufficient 
quantity." 

"  Precisely.  Which  means,  for  a  woman,  with  ex 
travagance  and  to  the  point  of  immorality." 

"  I  ain't  a  woman,"  Maud  Blandy  sighed.  "  I  wish 
I  were  !  " 

"  Well,  about  the  pity,"  he  went  on;  "  you  shall  be 
immoral,  I  promise  you,  before  you've  done.  Doesn't 
Mortimer  Marshal,"  he  asked,  "  take  you  for  a  wo 
man?" 

"  You'll  have  to  ask  him.  How,"  she  demanded, 
"  does  one  know  those  things?  "  And  she  stuck  to  her 
Beadel-Muffet.  "  If  you're  to  see  him  on  Monday 
sha'n't  you  then  get  to  the  bottom  of  it?  " 

"Oh,  I  don't  conceal  from  you  that  I  promise  myself 
larks,  but  I  won't  tell  you,  positively  I  won't,"  Bight 
said,  "  what  I  see.  You're  morbid.  If  it's  only  bad 
enough — I  mean  his  motive — you'll  want  to  save  him." 

"  Well,  isn't  that  what  you're  to  profess  to  him  that 
you  want  ?  " 

"  Ah,"  the  young  man  returned.  "  I  believe  you'd 
really  invent  a  way." 

"  I  would  if  I  could."  And  with  that  she  dropped 
it.  "  There's  my  fat  friend,"  she  presently  added,  as 
the  entr'acte  still  hung  heavy  and  Mortimer  Marshal, 
from  a  row  much  in  advance  of  them,  screwed  himself 
round  in  his  tight  place  apparently  to  keep  her  in  his 
eye. 

"  He  does  then,"  said  her  companion,  "  take  you  for 
a  woman.  I  seem  to  guess  he's  '  littery.' ' 

"  That's  it ;  so  badly  that  he  wrote  that  '  littery  '  ply 
Corisanda,  you  must  remember,  with  Beatrice  Beau 
mont  in  the  principal  part,  which  was  given  at  three 
matinees  in  this  very  place  and  which  hadn't  even  the 
luck  of  being  slated.  Every  creature  connected  with 
the  production,  from  the  man  himself  and  Beatrice  her- 
self  down  to  the  mothers  and  grandmothers  of  the  six- 

337 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

penny  young  women,  the  young  women  of  the  pro 
grammes,  was  interviewed  both  before  and  after,  and 
he  promptly  published  the  piece,  pleading  guilty  to  the 
*  littery  '  charge — which  is  the  great  stand  he  takes  and 
the  subject  of  the  discussion." 

Bight  had  wonderingly  followed.  "  Of  what  discus 
sion?" 

"  Why,  the  one  he  thinks  there  ought  to  have  been. 
There  hasn't  been  any,  of  course,  but  he  wants  it,  dread 
fully  misses  it.  People  won't  keep  it  up — whatever 
they  did  do,  though  I  don't  myself  make  out  that  they 
did  anything.  His  state  of  mind  requires  something  to 
start  with,  which  has  got  somehow  to  be  provided. 
There  must  have  been  a  noise  made,  don't  you  see?  to 
make  him  prominent ;  and  in  order  to  remain  prominent 
he  has  got  to  go  for  his  enemies.  The  hostility  to  his 
ply,  and  all  because  it's  '  littery,'  we  can  do  nothing 
without  that ;  but  it's  uphill  wrork  to  come  across  it.  We 
sit  up  nights  trying,  but  we  seem  to  get  no  for'arder. 
The  public  attention  would  seem  to  abhor  the  whole 
matter  even  as  nature  abhors  a  vacuum.  We've  noth 
ing  to  go  upon,  otherwise  we  might  go  far.  But  there 
we  are." 

"  I  see,"  Bight  commented.  "  You're  nowhere  at 
all." 

'*  No ;  it  isn't  even  that,  for  we're  just  where  Cori- 
sanda,  on  the  stage  and  in  the  closet,  put  us  at  a  stroke. 
Only  there  we  stick  fast — nothing  seems  to  happen, 
nothing  seems  to  come  or  to  be  capable  of  being  made 
to  come.  We  wait." 

"  Oh,  if  he  waits  with  you!  "  Bight  amicably  jibed. 

"  He  may  wait  for  ever?  " 

"  No,  but  resignedly.  You'll  make  him  forget  his 
wrongs." 

"  Ah,  I'm  not  of  that  sort,  and  I  could  only  do  it  by 
making  him  come  into  his  rights.  And  I  recognise 
now  that  that's  impossible.  There  are  different  cases, 

338 


THE   PAPERS 

you  see,  whole  different  classes  of  them,  and  his  is  the 
opposite  to  Beadel-Muffet's." 

Howard  Bight  gave  a  grunt.  "  Why  the  opposite  if 
you  also  pity  him?  I'll  be  hanged,"  he  added,  "  if  you 
won't  save  him  too." 

But  she  shook  her  head.  She  knew.  "  No ;  but  it's 
nearly,  in  its  way,  as  lurid.  Do  you  know,"  she  asked, 
what  he  has  done?  " 

"  Why,  the  difficulty  appears  to  be  that  he  can't  have 
done  anything.  He  should  strike  once  more — hard, 
and  in  the  same  place.  He  should  bring  out  another 
ply." 

''  Why  so?  You  can't  be  more  than  prominent,  and 
he  is  prominent.  You  can't  do  more  than  subscribe, 
in  your  prominence,  to  thirty-seven  '  press  cutting  ' 
agencies  in  England  and  America,  and,  having  done  so, 
you  can't  do  more  than  sit  at  home  with  your  ear  on  the 
postman's  knock,  looking  out  for  results.  There  comes 
in  the  tragedy — there  are  no  results.  Mortimer  Mar 
shal's  postman  doesn't  knock ;  the  press-cutting  agencies 
can't  find  anything  to  cut.  With  thirty-seven,  in  the 
whole  English-speaking  world,  scouring  millions  of 
papers  for  him  in  vain,  and  with  a  big  slice  of  his  pri 
vate  income  all  the  while  going  to  it,  the  *  irony  '  is  too 
cruel,  and  the  way  he  looks  at  one,  as  in  one's  degree 
responsible,  does  make  one  wince.  He  expected,  nat 
urally,  most  from  the  Americans,  but  it's  they  who  have 
failed  him  worst.  Their  silence  is  that  of  the  tomb, 
and  it  seems  to  grow,  if  the  silence  of  the  tomb  can 
grow.  He  won't  admit  that  the  thirty-seven  look  far 
enough  or  long  enough,  and  he  writes  them,  I  infer, 
angry  letters,  wanting  to  know  what  the  deuce  they 
suppose  he  has  paid  them  for.  But  what  are  they 
either,  poor  things,  to  do  ?  " 

"  Do?  They  can  print  his  angry  letters.  That,  at 
least,  will  break  the  silence,  and  he'll  like  it  better  than 
nothing." 

339 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

This  appeared  to  strike  our  young  woman.  "  Upon 
my  word,  I  really  believe  he  would."  Then  she  thought 
better  of  it.  "  But  they'd  be  afraid,  for  they  do  guar 
antee,  you  know,  that  there's  something  for  everyone. 
They  claim  it's  their  strength — that  there's  enough  to 
go  round.  They  won't  want  to  show  that  they  break 
down." 

"  Oh,  well,"  said  the  young  man,  "  if  he  can't  man 
age  to  smash  a  pane  of  glass  somewhere !  " 

"  That's  what  he  thought  /  would  do.  And  it's 
what  /  thought  I  might,"  Maud  added ;  "  otherwise  I 
wouldn't  have  approached  him.  I  did  it  on  spec,  but 
I'm  no  use.  I'm  a  fatal  influence.  I'm  a  non-con 
ductor." 

She  said  it  with  such  plain  sincerity  that  it  quickly 
took  her  companion's  attention.  "  I  say!  "  he  covertly 
murmured.  "  Have  you  a  secret  sorrow  ?  '' 

"  Of  course  I've  a  secret  sorrow."  And  she  stared 
at  it,  stiff  and  a  little  sombre,  not  wanting  it  to  be  too 
freely  handled,  while  the  curtain  at  last  rose  to  the 
lighted  stage. 

Ill 

SHE  was  later  on  more  open  about  it,  sundry  other 
things,  not  wholly  alien,  having  meanwhile  happened. 
One  of  these  had  been  that  her  friend  had  waited  with 
her  to  the  end  of  the  Finnish  performance  and  that  it 
had  then,  in  the  lobby,  as  they  went  out,  not  been  pos 
sible  for  her  not  to  make  him  acquainted  with  Mr.  Mor 
timer  Marshal.  This  gentleman  had  clearly  waylaid 
her  and  had  also  clearly  divined  that  her  companion 
was  of  the  Papers — papery  all  through;  which  doubt 
less  had  something  to  do  with  his  having  handsomely 
proposed  to  them  to  accompany  him  somewhere  to  tea. 
They  hadn't  seen  why  they  shouldn't,  it  being  an  ad 
venture,  all  in  their  line,  like  another ;  and  he  had  car 
ried  them,  in  a  four-wheeler,  to  a  small  and  refined 

340 


THE   PAPERS 

club  in  a  region  which  was  as  the  fringe  of  the  Picca 
dilly  region,  where  even  their  own  presence  scarce 
availed  to  contradict  the  implication  of  the  exclusive. 
The  whole  occasion,  they  were  further  to  feel,  was  es 
sentially  a  tribute  to  their  professional  connection,  espe 
cially  that  side  of  it  which  flushed  and  quavered,  which 
panted  and  pined  in  their  host's  personal  nervousness. 
Maud  Blandy  now  saw  it  vain  to  contend  with  his  de 
lusion  that  she,  underfed  and  imprinted,  who  had  never 
been  so  conscious  as  during  these  bribed  moments  of 
her  non-conducting  quality,  was  papery  to  any  purpose 
— a  delusion  that  exceeded,  by  her  measure,  every  other 
form  of  pathos.  The  decoration  of  the  tea-room  was 
a  pale,  aesthetic  green,  the  liquid  in  the  delicate  cups  a 
copious  potent  amber;  the  bread  and  butter  was  thin 
and  golden,  the  muffins  a  revelation  to  her  that  she  was 
barbarously  hungry.  There  were  ladies  at  other  tables 
with  other  gentlemen — ladies  with  long  feather  boas 
and  hats  not  of  the  sailor  pattern,  and  gentlemen  whose 
straight  collars  were  doubled  up  much  higher  than 
Howard  Bight's  and  their  hair  parted  far  more  at  the 
side.  The  talk  was  so  low,  with  pauses  somehow  so 
not  of  embarrassment  that  it  could  only  have  been 
earnest,  and  the  air,  an  air  of  privilege  and  privacy  to 
our  young  woman's  sense,  seemed  charged  with  fine 
things  taken  for  granted.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  Bight's 
company  she  would  have  grown  almost  frightened,  so 
much  seemed  to  be  offered  her  for  something  she 
couldn't  do.  That  word  of  Bight's  about  smashing  a 
window-pane  had  lingered  with  her ;  it  had  made  her 
afterwards  wonder,  while  they  sat  in  their  stalls,  if 
there  weren't  some  brittle  surface  in  range  of  her  own 
elbow.  She  had  to  fall  back  on  the  consciousness  of 
how  her  elbow,  in  spite  of  her  type,  lacked  practical 
point,  and  that  wras  just  why  the  terms  in  which  she  saw 
her  services  now,  as  she  believed,  bid  for,  had  the  effect 
of  scaring  her.  They  came  out  most,  for  that  matter, 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

in  Mr.  Mortimer  Marshal's  dumbly-insistent  eyes,  which 
seemed  to  be  perpetually  saying :  "  You  know  what  I 
mean  when  I'm  too  refined — like  everything  here,  don't 
you  see  ? — to  say  it  out.  You  know  there  ought  to  be 
something  about  me  somewhere,  and  that  really,  with 
the  opportunities,  the  facilities  you  enjoy,  it  wouldn't 
be  so  much  out  of  your  way  just  to — well,  reward  this 
little  attention." 

The  fact  that  he  was  probably  every  day,  in  just  the 
same  anxious  flurry  and  with  just  the  same  superlative 
delicacy,  paying  little  attentions  with  an  eye  to  little  re 
wards,  this  fact  by  itself  but  scantily  eased  her,  con 
vinced  as  she  was  that  no  luck  but  her  own  was  as  hope 
less  as  his.  He  squared  the  clever  young  wherever  he 
could  get  at  them,  but  it  was  the  clever  young,  taking 
them  generally,  who  fed  from  his  hand  and  then  forgot 
him.  She  didn't  forget  him ;  she  pitied  him  too  much, 
pitied  herself,  and  was  more  and  more,  as  she  found, 
now  pitying  everyone;  only  she  didn't  know  how  to 
say  to  him  that  she  could  do,  after  all,  nothing  for  him. 
She  oughtn't  to  have  come,  in  the  first  place,  and 
wouldn't  if  it  hadn't  been  for  her  companion.  Her 
companion  was  increasingly  sardonic — which  was  the 
way  in  which,  at  best,  she  now  increasingly  saw  him; 
he  was  shameless  in  acceptance,  since,  as  she  knew,  as 
she  felt  at  his  side,  he  had  come  only,  at  bottom,  to  mis 
lead  and  to  mystify.  He  was,  as  she  wasn't,  on  the 
Papers  and  of  them,  and  their  baffled  entertainer  knew 
it  without  either  a  hint  on  the  subject  from  herself  or  a 
need,  on  the  young  man's  own  lips,  of  the  least  vulgar 
allusion.  Nothing  was  so  much  as  named,  the  whole 
connection  was  sunk;  they  talked  about  clubs,  muf 
fins,  afternoon  performances,  the  effect  of  the  Finnish 
soul  upon  the  appetite,  quite  as  if  they  had  met  in 
society.  Nothing  could  have  been  less  like  society 
— she  innocently  supposed  at  least — than  the  real 
spirit  of  their  meeting;  yet  Bight  did  nothing  that 

342 


THE   PAPERS 

he  might  do  to  keep  the  affair  within  bounds.  When 
looked  at  by  their  friend  so  hard  and  so  hintingly, 
he  only  looked  back,  just  as  dumbly,  but  just  as 
intensely  and,  as  might  be  said,  portentously;  ever 
so  impenetrably,  in  fine,  and  ever  so  wickedly.  He 
didn't  smile — as  if  to  cheer — the  least  little  bit ;  which 
he  might  be  abstaining  from  on  purpose  to  make  his 
promises  solemn :  so,  as  he  tried  to  smile — she  couldn't, 
it  was  all  too  dreadful — she  wouldn't  meet  her  friend's 
eyes,  but  kept  looking,  heartlessly,  at  the  "  notes  "  of 
the  place,  the  hats  of  the  ladies,  the  tints  of  the  rugs, 
the  intenser  Chippendale,  here  and  there,  of  the  chairs 
and  tables,  of  the  very  guests,  of  the  very  waitresses. 
It  had  come  to  her  early :  "  I've  done  him,  poor  man, 
at  home,  and  the  obvious  thing  now  will  be  to  do  him 
at  his  club."  But  this  inspiration  plumped  against 
her  fate  even  as  an  imprisoned  insect  against  the  win 
dow-glass.  She  couldn't  do  him  at  his  club  without 
decently  asking  leave ;  whereby  he  would  know  of  her 
feeble  feeler,  feeble  because  she  was  so  sure  of  refusals. 
She  would  rather  tell  him,  desperately,  what  she 
thought  of  him  than  expose  him  to  see  again  that  she 
was  herself  nowhere,  herself  nothing.  Her  one  com 
fort  was  that,  for  the  half-hour — it  had  made  the  sit 
uation  quite  possible — he  seemed  fairly  hypnotised  by 
her  colleague ;  so  that  when  they  took  leave.  he,as  good 
as  thanked  her  for  what  she  had  this  time  done  for  him. 
It  was  one  of  the  signs  of  his  infatuated  state  that  he 
clearly  viewed  Bight  as  a  mass  of  helpful  cleverness, 
though  the  cruel  creature,  uttering  scarce  a  sound,  had 
only  fixed  him  in  a  manner  that  might  have  been  taken 
for  the  fascination  of  deference.  He  might  perfectly 
have  been  an  idiot  for  all  the  poor  gentleman  knew. 
But  the  poor  gentleman  saw  a  possible  "  leg  up  "  in 
every  bush;  and  nothing  but  impertinence  would  have 
convinced  him  that  she  hadn't  brought  him,  com- 
punctiously  as  to  the  past,  a  master  of  the  proper  art. 

343 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

Now,  more  than  ever,  how  he  would  listen  for  the 
postman ! 

The  whole  occasion  had  broken  so,  for  busy  Bight, 
into  matters  to  be  attended  to  before  Fleet  Street 
warmed  to  its  work,  that  the  pair  were  obliged,  outside, 
to  part  company  on  the  spot,  and  it  was  only  on  the 
morrow,  a  Saturday,  that  they  could  taste  again  of  that 
comparison  of  notes  which  made  for  each  the  main 
savour,  albeit  slightly  acrid,  of  their  current  conscious 
ness.  The  air  was  full,  as  from  afar,  of  the  grand  in 
difference  of  spring,  of  which  the  breath  could  be  felt 
so  much  before  the  face  could  be  seen,  and  they  had 
bicycled  side  by  side  out  to  Richmond  Park  as  with  the 
impulse  to  meet  it  on  its  way.  They  kept  a  Saturday, 
when  possible,  sacred  to  the  Suburbs  as  distinguished 
from  the  Papers — when  possible  being  largely  when 
Maud  could  achieve  the  use  of  the  somewhat  fatigued 
family  machine.  Many  sisters  contended  for  it,  under 
whose  flushed  pressure  it  might  have  been  seen  spin 
ning  in  many  different  directions.  Superficially,  at 
Richmond,  our  young  couple  rested — found  a  quiet  cor 
ner  to  lounge  deep  in  the  Park,  with  their  machines 
propped  by  one  side  of  a  great  tree  and  their  associated 
backs  sustained  by  another.  But  agitation,  finer  than 
the  finest  scorching,  was  in  the  air  for  them;  it  was 
made  sharp,  rather  abruptly,  by  a  vivid  outbreak  from 
Maud.  It  was  very  well,  she  observed,  for  her  friend 
to  be  clever  at  the  expense  of  the  general  "  greed  "; 
he  saw  it  in  the  light  of  his  own  jolly  luck,  and  what 
she  saw,  as  it  happened,  was  nothing  but  the  gen 
eral  art  of  letting  you  starve,  yourself,  in  your  hole. 
At  the  end  of  five  minutes  her  companion  had  turned 
quite  pale  with  having  to  face  the  large  extent  of 
her  confession.  It  was  a  confession  for  the  reason 
that  in  the  first  place  it  evidently  cost  her  an  effort 
that  pride  had  again  and  again  successfully  pre 
vented,  and  because  in  the  second  she  had  thus  the 

344 


THE   PAPERS 

air  of  having  lived  overmuch  on  swagger.  She  could 
scarce  have  said  at  this  moment  what,  for  a  good 
while,  she  had  really  lived  on,  and  she  didn't  let  him 
know  now  to  complain  either  of  her  privation  or  of 
her  disappointments.  She  did  it  to  show  why  she 
couldn't  go  with  him  when  he  was  so  awfully  sweep 
ing.  There  were  at  any  rate  apparently,  all  over,  two 
wholly  different  sets  of  people.  If  everyone  rose  to  his 
bait  no  creature  had  ever  risen  to  hers ;  and  that  was  the 
grim  truth  of  her  position,  which  proved  at  the  least 
that  there  were  two  quite  different  kinds  of  luck.  They 
told  two  different  stories  of  human  vanity ;  they  couldn't 
be  reconciled.  And  the  poor  girl  put  it  in  a  nutshell. 
"  There's  but  one  person  I've  ever  written  to  who  has 
so  much  as  noticed  my  letter." 

He  wondered,  painfully  affected — it  rather  over 
whelmed  him;  he  took  hold  of  it  at  the  easiest  point. 
"  One  person ?  " 

"  The  misguided  man  we  had  tea  with.  He  alone — 
he  rose." 

"  Well  then,  you  see  that  when  they  do  rise  they  are 
misguided.  In  other  words  they're  donkeys." 

"  What  I  see  is  that  I  don't  strike  the  right  ones  and 
that  I  haven't  therefore  your  ferocity;  that  is  my  feroc 
ity,  if  I  have  any,  rests  on  a  different  ground.  You'll 
say  that  I  go  for  the  wrong  people;  but  I  don't,  God 
knows — witness  Mortimer  Marshal — fly  too  high.  I 
picked  him  out,  after  prayer  and  fasting,  as  just  the 
likeliest  of  the  likely — not  anybody  a  bit  grand  and  yet 
not  quite  a  nobody ;  and  by  an  extraordinary  chance  I 
was  justified.  Then  I  pick  out  others  who  seem  just 
as  good,  I  pray  and  fast,  and  no  sound  comes  back.  But 
I  work  through  my  ferocity  too,"  she  stiffly  continued, 
"  though  at  first  it  was  great,  feeling  as  I  did  that  when 
my  bread  and  butter  was  in  it  people  had  no  right  not 
to  oblige  me.  It  was  their  duty — what  they  were  prom 
inent  for — to  be  interviewed,  so  as  to  keep  me  going; 

345 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

and  I  did  as  much  for  them  any  day  as  they  would  be 
doing  for  me." 

Bight  heard  her,  but  for  a  moment  said  nothing. 
"  Did  you  tell  them  that  ?  I  mean  say  to  them  it  was 
your  little  all." 

"  Not  vulgarly — I  know  how.  There  are  ways  of 
saying  it's  '  important ' ;  and  I  hint  it  just  enough  to 
see  that  the  importance  fetches  them  no  more  than  any 
thing  else.  It  isn't  important  to  them.  And  I,  in  their 
place,"  Maud  went  on,  "  wouldn't  answer  either;  I'll  be 
hanged  if  ever  I  would.  That's  what  it  comes  to,  that 
there  are  two  distinct  lots,  and  that  my  luck,  being  born 
so,  is  always  to  try  the  snubbers.  You  were  born  to 
know  by  instinct  the  others.  But  it  makes  me  more 
tolerant." 

"  More  tolerant  of  what?  "  her  friend  asked. 

"  Well,  of  what  you  described  to  me.  Of  what  you 
rail  at." 

"  Thank  you  for  me!"  Bight  laughed. 

"  Why  not?    Don't  you  live  on  it?  " 

"  Not  in  such  luxury — you  surely  must  see  for  your 
self — as  the  distinction  you  make  seems  to  imply.  It 
isn't  luxury  to  be  nine-tenths  of  the  time  sick  of  every 
thing.  People  moreover  are  worth  to  me  but  tup 
pence  apiece;  there  are  too  many,  confound  them — so 
many  that  I  don't  see  really  how  any  can  be  left  over 
for  your  superior  lot.  It  is  a  chance,"  he  pursued — 
"  I've  had  refusals  too — though  I  confess  they've  some 
times  been  of  the  funniest.  Besides,  I'm  getting  out  of 
it,"  the  young  man  wound  up.  "God  knows  I  want  to. 
My  advice  to  you,"  he  added  in  the  same  breath,  "  is  to 
sit  tight.  There  are  as  good  fish  in  the  sea !  " 

She  waited  a  moment.  "  You're  sick  of  everything 
and  you're  getting  out  of  it;  it's  not  good  enough  for 
you,  in  other  words,  but  it's  still  good  enough  for  me. 
Why  am  I  to  sit  tight  when  you  sit  so  loose  ?  " 

"  Because  what  you  want  will  come — can't  help  com- 
346 


THE  PAPERS 

ing.  Then,  in  time,  you'll  also  get  out  of  it.  But  then 
you'll  have  had  it,  as  I  have,  and  the  good  of  it." 

"  But  what,  really,  if  it  breeds  nothing  but  disgust," 
she  asked,  "  do  you  call  the  good  of  it  ?  " 

"  Well,  two  things.  First  the  bread  and  butter,  and 
then  the  fun.  I  repeat  it — sit  tight." 

"Where's  the  fun,"  she  asked  again,  "  of  learning  to 
despise  people?  " 

"You'll  see  when  it  comes.  It  will  all  be  upon 
you,  it  will  change  for  you  any  day.  Sit  tight,  sit 

tight." 

He  expressed  such  confidence  that  she  might  for  a 
minute  have  been  weighing  it.  "  If  you  get  out  of  it, 
what  will  you  do  ?  " 

"  Well,  imaginative  work.  This  job  has  made  me  at 
least  see.  It  has  given  me  the  loveliest  tips." 

She  had  still  another  pause.  "  It  has  given  me — my 
experience  has — a  lovely  tip  too." 

"  And  what's  that?  " 

"  I've  told  you  before — the  tip  of  pity.  I'm  so  much 
sorrier  for  them  all — panting  and  gasping  for  it  like  fish 
out  of  water — than  I  am  anything  else." 

He  wondered.  "  But  I  thought  that  was  what  just 
isn't  your  experience." 

"Oh,  I  mean  then,"  she  said  impatiently,  "  that  my 
tip  is  from  yours.  It's  only  a  different  tip.  I  want 
to  save  them." 

"Well,"  the  young  man  replied,  and  as  if  the  idea  had 
had  a  meaning  for  him,  "  saving  them  may  perhaps 
work  out  as  a  branch.  The  question  is  can  you  be  paid 
for  it?" 

"  Beadel-Muffet  would  pay  me,"  Maud  suddenly 
suggested. 

"  Why,  that's  just  what  I'm  expecting,"  her  com 
panion  laughed,  "  that  he  will,  after  to-morrow — di 
rectly  or  indirectly — do  me." 

"  Will  you  take  it  from  him  then  only  to  get  him  in 

347 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

deeper,  as  that's  what  you  perfectly  know  you'll  do? 
You  won't  save  him;  you'll  lose  him." 

"  What  then  would  you,  in  the  case,"  Bight  asked, 
"  do  for  your  money  ?  " 

Well,  the  girl  thought.  "  I'd  get  him  to  see  me — I 
should  have  first,  I  recognise,  to  catch  my  hare — and 
then  I'd  work  up  my  stuff.  Which  would  be  boldly, 
quite  by  a  master-stroke,  a  statement  of  his  fix — of  the 
fix,  I  mean,  of  his  wanting,  his  supplicating  to  be 
dropped.  I'd  give  out  that  it  would  really  oblige.  Then 
I'd  send  my  copy  about,  and  the  rest  of  the  matter 
would  take  care  of  itself.  I  don't  say  you  could  do  it 
that  way — you'd  have  a  different  effect.  But  I  should 
be  able  to  trust  the  thing,  being  mine,  not  to  be  looked 
at,  or,  if  looked  at,  chucked  straight  into  the  basket.  I 
should  so  have,  to  that  extent,  handled  the  matter,  and 
I  should  so,  by  merely  touching  it,  have  broken  the 
spell.  That's  my  one  line — I  stop  things  off  by  touch 
ing  them.  There'd  never  be  a  word  about  him  more." 

Her  friend,  with  his  legs  out  and  his  hands  locked  at 
the  back  of  his  neck,  had  listened  with  indulgence. 
"  Then  hadn't  I  better  arrange  it  for  you  that  Beadel- 
Muffet  shall  see  you?  " 

"  Oh,  not  after  you've  damned  him  !  " 

'  You  want  to  see  him  first?  " 

"  It  will  be  the  only  way — to  be  of  any  use  to  him. 
You  ought  to  wire  him  in  fact  not  to  open  his  mouth 
till  he  has  seen  me." 

"  Well,  I  will,"  said  Bight  at  last.  "  But,  you  know, 
we  shall  lose  something  very  handsome — his  struggle, 
all  in  vain,  with  his  fate.  Noble  sport,  the  sight  of  it 
all."  He  turned  a  little,  to  rest  on  his  elbow,  and, 
cycling  suburban  young  man  as  he  was,  he  might  have 
been,  outstretched  under  his  tree,  melancholy  Jacques 
looking  off  into  a  forest  glade,  even  as  sailor-hatted 
Maud,  in — for  elegance — a  new  cotton  blouse  and  a 
long-limbed  angular  attitude,  might  have  prosefully 

348 


THE   PAPERS 

suggested  the  mannish  Rosalind.  He  raised  his  face 
in  appeal  to  her.  "  Do  you  really  ask  me  to  sacrifice 
it?" 

"  Rather  than  sacrifice  him?     Of  course  I  do." 

He  said  for  a  while  nothing  more;  only,  propped  on 
his  elbow,  lost  himself  again  in  the  Park.  After  which 
he  turned  back  to  her.  "Will  you  have  me?  "  he  sud 
denly  asked. 

"'  Have  you' ?" 

"  Be  my  bonny  bride.  For  better,  for  worse.  I 
hadn't,  upon  my  honour,"  he  explained  with  obvious 
sincerity,  "  understood  you  were  so  down." 

"  Well,  it  isn't  so  bad  as  that,"  said  Maud  Blandy. 

"  So  bad  as  taking  up  with  me?  " 

"  It  isn't  as  bad  as  having  let  you  know — when  I 
didn't  want  you  to." 

He  sank  back  again  with  his  head  dropped,  putting 
himself  more  at  his  ease.  "  You're  too  proud — that's 
what's  the  matter  with  you.  And  I'm  too  stupid." 

"  No,  you're  not,"  said  Maud  grimly.  "  Not 
stupid." 

"  Only  cruel,  cunning,  treacherous,  cold-blooded, 
vile?"  He  drawled  the  words  out  softly,  as  if  they 
sounded  fair. 

"  And  I'm  not  stupid  either,"  Maud  Blandy  went  on. 
"  We  just,  poor  creatures — well,  we  just  know." 

"  Of  course  we  do.  So  why  do  you  want  us  to  drug 
ourselves  with  rot?  to  go  on  as  if  we  didn't  know?  " 

She  made  no  answer  for  a  moment ;  then  she  said : 
"  There's  good  to  be  known  too." 

"  Of  course,  again.  There  are  all  sorts  of  things,  and 
some  much  better  than  others.  That's  why,"  the 
young  man  added,  "  I  just  put  that  question  to  you." 

"Oh  no,  it  isn't.  You  put  it  to  me  because  you 
think  I  feel  I'm  no  good." 

"  How  so,  since  I  keep  assuring  you  that  you've  only 
to  wait  ?  How  so,  since  I  keep  assuring  you  that  if  you 

349 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

do  wait  it  will  all  come  with  a  rush?  But  say  I  am 
sorry  for  you,"  Bight  lucidly  pursued ;  "  how  does  that 
prove  either  that  my  motive  is  base  or  that  I  do  you  a 
wrong?  " 

The  girl  waived  this  question,  but  she  presently 
tried  another.  "  Is  it  your  idea  that  we  should  live  on 
all  the  people ?  " 

"  The  people  we  catch  ?  Yes,  old  man,  till  we  can  do 
better." 

"  My  conviction  is,"  she  soon  returned,  "  that  if  I 
were  to  marry  you  I  should  dish  you.  I  should  spoil 
the  business.  It  would  fall  off ;  and,  as  I  can  do  noth 
ing  myself,  then  where  should  we  be  ?  " 

"Well,"  said  Bight,  "  we  mightn't  be  quite  so  high  up 
in  the  scale  of  the  morbid." 

"  It's  you  that  are  morbid,"  she  answered.  "  You've, 
in  your  way — like  everyone  else,  for  that  matter,  all 
over  the  place — '  sport '  on  the  brain." 

"Well,"  he  demanded,  "what  is  sport  but  success? 
What  is  success  but  sport?  " 

"  Bring  that  out  somewhere.  If  it  be  true,"  she 
said,  "  I'm  glad  I'm  a  failure." 

After  which,  for  a  longish  space,  they  sat  together 
in  silence,  a  silence  finally  broken  by  a  word  from  the 
young  man.  "  But  about  Mortimer  Marshal — how  do 
you  propose  to  save  him?  " 

It  was  a  change  of  subject  that  might,  by  its  so  easy 
introduction  of  matter  irrelevant,  have  seemed  intended 
to  dissipate  whatever  was  left  of  his  proposal  of  mar 
riage.  That  proposal,  however,  had  been  somehow 
both  too  much  in  the  tone  of  familiarity  to  linger  and 
too  little  in  that  of  vulgarity  to  drop.  It  had  had  no 
form,  but  the  mild  air  kept  perhaps  thereby  the  better 
the  taste  of  it.  This  was  sensibly  moreover  in  what  the 
girl  found  to  reply.  "  I  think,  you  know,  that  he'd  be 
no  such  bad  friend.  I  mean  that,  with  his  appetite, 
there  would  be  something  to  be  done.  He  doesn't  half 
hate  me." 

350 


THE   PAPERS 

"Ah,  my  dear,"  her  friend  ejaculated,  "  don't,  for 
God's  sake,  be  low." 

But  she  kept  it  up.  "  He  clings  to  me.  You  saw. 
It's  hideous,  the  way  he's  able  to  *  do  '  himself." 

Bight  lay  quiet,  then  spoke  as  with  a  recall  of  the 
Chippendale  Club.  "  Yes,  I  couldn't  '  do  '  you  as  he 
could.  But  if  you  don't  bring  it  off ?  " 

"Why,  then,  does  he  cling?  Oh,  because,  all  the 
same,  I'm  potentially  the  Papers  still.  I'm  at  any  rate 
the  nearest  he  has  got  to  them.  And  then  I'm  other 
things." 

"  I  see." 

"  I'm  so  awfully  attractive,"  said  Maud  Blandy.  She 
got  up  with  this  and,  shaking  out  her  frock,  looked  at 
her  resting  bicycle,  looked  at  the  distances  possibly 
still  to  be  gained.  Her  companion  paused,  but  at  last 
also  rose,  and  by  that  time  she  was  awaiting  him,  a 
little  gaunt  and  still  not  quite  cool,  as  an  illustration  of 
her  last  remark.  He  stood  there  watching  her,  and 
she  followed  this  remark  up.  "  I  do,  you  know,  really 
pity  him." 

It  had  almost  a  feminine  fineness,  and  their  eyes  con 
tinued  to  meet.  "Oh,  you'll  work  it  !  "  And  the 
young  man  went  to  his  machine. 

IV 

IT  was  not  till  five  days  later  that  they  again  came  to 
gether,  and  during  these  days  many  things  had  hap 
pened.  Maud  Blandy  had,  with  high  elation,  for  her 
own  portion,  a  sharp  sense  of  this ;  if  it  had  at  the  time 
done  nothing  more  intimate  for  her  the  Sunday  of  bit 
terness  just  spent  with  Howard  Bight  had  started,  all 
abruptly,  a  turn  of  the  tide  of  her  luck.  This  turn  had 
not. in  the  least  been  in  the  young  man's  having  spoken 
to  her  of  marriage — since  she  hadn't  even,  up  to  the 
late  hour  of  their  parting,  so  much  as  answered  him 

351 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

straight :  she  dated  the  sense  of  difference  much  rather 
from  the  throb  of  a  happy  thought  that  had  come  to  her 
while  she  cycled  home  to  Kilburnia  in  the  darkness. 
The  throb  had  made  her  for  the  few  minutes,  tired  as 
she  was,  put  on  speed,  and  it  had  been  the  cause  of  still 
further  proceedings  for  her  the  first  thing  the  next 
morning.  The  active  step  that  was  the  essence  of 
these  proceedings  had  almost  got  itself  taken  before 
she  went  to  bed ;  which  indeed  was  what  had  happened 
to  the  extent  of  her  writing,  on  the  spot,  a  meditated 
letter.  She  sat  down  to  it  by  the  light  of  the  guttering 
candle  that  awaited  her  on  the  dining-room  table  and 
in  the  stale  air  of  family  food  that  only  had  been — a 
residuum  so  at  the  mercy  of  mere  ventilation  that  she 
didn't  so  much  as  peep  into  a  cupboard ;  after  which  she 
had  been  on  the  point  of  nipping  over,  as  she  would 
have  said,  to  drop  it  into  that  opposite  pillar-box  whose 
vivid  maw,  opening  out  through  thick  London  nights, 
had  received  so  many  of  her  fruitless  little  ventures. 
But  she  had  checked  herself  and  waited,  waited  to  be 
sure,  with  the  morning,  that  her  fancy  wouldn't  fade ; 
posting  her  note  in  the  end,  however,  with  a  confident 
jerk,  as  soon  as  she  was  up.  She  had,  later  on,  had 
business,  or  at  least  had  sought  it,  among  the  haunts 
that  she  had  taught  herself  to  regard  as  professional; 
but  neither  on  the  Monday  nor  on  either  of  the  days 
that  directly  followed  had  she  encountered  there  the 
friend  whom  it  would  take  a  difference  in  more  matters 
than  could  as  yet  be  dealt  with  to  enable  her  to  regard, 
with  proper  assurance  or  with  proper  modesty,  as  a 
lover.  Whatever  he  was,  none  the  less,  it  couldn't 
otherwise  have  come  to  her  that  it  was  possible  to  feel 
lonely  in  the  Strand.  That  showed,  after  all,  how 
thick  they  must  constantly  have  been — which  was 
perhaps  a  thing  to  begin  to  think  of  in  a  new,  in  a 
steadier  light.  But  it  showed  doubtless  still  more  that 
her  companion  was  probably  up  to  something  rather 

352 


THE   PAPERS 

awful ;  it  made  her  wonder,  holding  her  breath  a  little, 
about  Beadel-Muffet,  made  her  certain  that  he  and  his 
affairs  would  partly  account  for  Bight's  whirl  of  ab 
sence. 

Ever  conscious  of  empty  pockets,  she  had  yet  always 
a  penny,  or  at  least  a  ha'penny,  for  a  paper,  and  those 
she  now  scanned,  she  quickly  assured  herself,  were 
edited  quite  as  usual.  Sir  A.  B.  C.  Beadel-Muffet 
K.C.B.,  M.P.,  had  returned  on  Monday  from  Undertone, 
where  Lord  and  Lady  Wispers  had,  from  the  previous 
Friday,  entertained  a  very  select  party;  Sir  A.  B.  C. 
Beadel-Muffet  K.C.B.,  M.P.,  was  to  attend  on  Tuesday 
the  weekly  meeting  of  the  society  of  the  Friends  of  Rest ; 
Sir  A.  B.  C.  Beadel-Muffet  K.C.B.,  M.P.,  had  kindly 
consented  to  preside  on  Wednesday,  at  Samaritan 
House,  at  the  opening  of  the  Sale  of  Work  of  the  Mid 
dlesex  Incurables.  These  familiar  announcements, 
however,  far  from  appeasing  her  curiosity,  had  an  ef 
fect  upon  her  nerves ;  she  read  into  them  mystic  mean 
ings  that  she  had  never  read  before.  Her  freedom  of 
mind  in  this  direction  was  indeed  at  the  same  time  lim 
ited,  for  her  own  horizon  was  already,  by  the  Monday 
night,  bristling  with  new  possibilities,  and  the  Tuesday 
itself — well,  what  had  the  Tuesday  itself  become,  with 
this  eruption,  from  within,  of  interest  amounting  really 
to  a  revelation,  what  had  the  Tuesday  itself  become  but 
the  greatest  day  yet  of  her  life?  Such  a  description  of 
it  would  have  appeared  to  apply  predominantly  to  the 
morning  had  she  not,  under  the  influence,  precisely,  of 
the  morning's  thrill,  gone,  towards  evening,  with  her 
design,  into  the  Charing  Cross  Station.  There,  at  the 
bookstall,  she  bought  them  all,  every  rag  that  was 
hawked;  and  there,  as  she  unfolded  one  at  a  venture, 
in  the  crowd  and  under  the  lamps,  she  felt  her  con 
sciousness  further,  felt  it  for  the  moment  quite  im 
pressively,  enriched.  "  Personal  Peeps — Number 
Ninety-Three :  a  Chat  with  the  New  Dramatist  "  need- 

353 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

ed  neither  the  "  H.  B."  as  a  terminal  signature  nor  a 
text  spangled,  to  the  exclusion  of  almost  everything 
else,  with  Mortimer  Marshals  that  looked  as  tall  as  if 
lettered  on  posters,  to  help  to  account  for  her  young 
man's  use  of  his  time.  And  yet,  as  she  soon  made  out, 
it  had  been  used  with  an  economy  that  caused  her  both 
to  wonder  and  to  wince ;  the  "  peep  "  commemorated 
being  none  other  than  their  tea  with  the  artless  creature 
the  previous  Saturday,  and  the  meagre  incidents  and 
pale  impressions  of  that  occasion  furnishing  forth  the 
picture. 

Bight  had  solicited  no  new  interview ;  he  hadn't  been 
such  a  fool — for  she  saw,  soon  enough,  with  all  her  in 
telligence,  that  this  was  what  he  would  have  been,  and 
that  a  repetition  of  contact  would  have  dished  him. 
What  he  had  done,  she  found  herself  perceiving — and 
perceiving  with  an  emotion  that  caused  her  face  to  glow 
— was  journalism  of  the  intensest  essence;  a  column 
concocted  of  nothing,  an  omelette  made,  as  it  were, 
without  even  the  breakage  of  the  egg  or  two  that  might 
have  been  expected  to  be  the  price.  The  poor  gentle 
man's  whereabouts  at  five  o'clock  was  the  only  egg 
broken,  and  this  light  and  delicate  crash  was  the  sound 
in  the  world  that  would  be  sweetest  to  him.  What  stuff 
it  had  to  be,  since  the  writer  really  knew  nothing  about 
him,  yet  how  its  being  just  such  stuff  made  it  perfectly 
serve  its  purpose!  She  might  have  marvelled  afresh, 
with  more  leisure,  at  such  purposes,  but  she  was  lost 
in  the  wonder  of  seeing  how,  without  matter,  without 
thought,  without  an  excuse,  without  a  fact  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  sufficiently  without  a  fiction,  he  had 
managed  to  be  as  resonant  as  if  he  had  beaten  a  drum 
on  the  platform  of  a  booth.  And  he  had  not  been  too 
personal,  not  made  anything  awkward  for  her,  had 
given  nothing  and  nobody  away,  had  tossed  the  Chip 
pendale  Club  into  the  air  with  such  a  turn  that  it  had 
fluttered  down  again,  like  a  blown  feather,  miles  from 

354 


THE   PAPERS 

its  site.  The  thirty-seven  agencies  would  already  be 
posting  to  their  subscriber  thirty-seven  copies,  and  their 
subscriber,  on  his  side,  would  be  posting,  to  his  ac 
quaintance,  many  times  thirty-seven,  and  thus  at  least 
getting  something  for  his  money;  but  this  didn't  tell 
her  why  her  friend  had  taken  the  trouble — if  it  had  been 
a  trouble;  why  at  all  events  he  had  taken  the  time, 
pressed  as  he  apparently  was  for  that  commodity. 
These  things  she  was  indeed  presently  to  learn,  but  they 
were  meanwhile  part  of  a  suspense  composed  of  more 
elements  than  any  she  had  yet  tasted.  And  the  suspense 
was  prolonged,  though  other  affairs  too,  that  were  not 
part  of  it,  almost  equally  crowded  upon  her;  the  week 
having  almost  waned  when  relief  arrived  in  the  form 
of  a  cryptic  post-card.  The  post-card  bore  the  H.  B., 
like  the  precious  "  Peep,"  which  had  already  had  a  won 
drous  sequel,  and  it  appointed,  for  the  tea-hour,  a  place 
of  meeting  familiar  to  Maud,  with  the  simple  addition 
of  the  significant  word  "  Larks  !  " 

When  the  time  he  had  indicated  came  she  waited  for 
him,  at  their  small  table,  swabbed  like  the  deck  of  a 
steam-packet,  nose  to  nose  with  a  mustard-pot  and  a 
price-list,  in  the  consciousness  of  perhaps  after  all  hav 
ing  as  much  to  tell  him  as  to  hear  from  him.  It  ap 
peared  indeed  at  first  that  this  might  well  be  the  case, 
for  the  questions  that  came  up  between  them  when  he 
had  taken  his  place  were  overwhelmingly  those  he  him 
self  insisted  on  putting.  "  What  has  he  done,  what  has 
he,  and  what  will  he?" — that  inquiry,  not  loud  but  deep, 
had  met  him  as  he  sat  down ;  without  however  produc 
ing  the  least  recognition.  Then  she  as  soon  felt  that 
his  silence  and  his  manner  were  enough  for  her,  or  that, 
if  they  hadn't  been,  his  wonderful  look,  the  straightest 
she  had  ever  had  from  him,  would  instantly  have  made 
them  so.  He  looked  at  her  hard,  hard,  as  if  he  had 
meant  "  I  say,  mind  your  eyes  !  "  and  it  amounted 
really  to  a  glimpse,  rather  fearful,  of  the  subject.  It  was 

355 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

no  joke,  the  subject,  clearly,  and  her  friend  had  fairly 
gained  age,  as  he  had  certainly  lost  weight,  in  his  recent 
dealings  with  it.  It  struck  her  even,  with  everything 
else,  that  this  was  positively  the  way  she  would  have 
liked  him  to  show  if  their  union  had  taken  the  form  they 
hadn't  reached  the  point  of  discussing;  wearily  coming 
back  to  her  from  the  thick  of  things,  wanting  to  put  on 
his  slippers  and  have  his  tea,  all  prepared  by  her  and  in 
their  place,  and  beautifully  to  be  trusted  to  regale  her 
in  his  turn.  He  was  excited,  disavowedly,  and  it  took 
more  disavowal  still  after  she  had  opened  her  budget — 
which  she  did,  in  truth,  by  saying  to  him  as  her  first 
alternative :  "  What  did  you  do  him  for,  poor  Mor 
timer  Marshal?  It  isn't  that  he's  not  in  the  seventh 
heaven !" 

"He  is  in  the  seventh  heaven !"  Bight  quickly  broke 
in.  "  He  doesn't  want  my  blood  ?  " 

"  Did  you  do  him,"  she  asked,  "  that  he  should  want 
it?  It's  splendid  how  you  could — simply  on  that 
show." 

"That  show?  Why,"  said  Howard  Bight,  "that 
show  was  an  immensity.  That  show  was  volumes, 
stacks,  abysses." 

He  said  it  in  such  a  tone  that  she  was  a  little  at  a 
loss.  "  Oh,  you  don't  want  abysses." 

"  Not  much,  to  knock  off  such  twaddle.  There  isn't 
a  breath  in  it  of  what  I  saw.  What  I  saw  is  my  own 
affair.  I've  got  the  abysses  for  myself.  They're  in 
my  head — it's  always  something.  But  the  monster," 
he  demanded,  "  has  written  you?  " 

"  How  couldn't  he — that  night?  I  got  it  the  next 
morning,  telling  me  how  much  he  wanted  to  thank  me 
and  asking  me  where  he  might  see  me.  So  I  went," 
said  Maud,  "  to  see  him." 

"  At  his  own  place  again?  " 

"  At  his  own  place  again.  What  do  I  yearn  for  but 
to  be  received  at  people's  own  places?  " 

356 


THE   PAPERS 

"  Yes,  for  the  stuff.  But  when  you've  had — as  you 
had  had  from  him — the  stuff?  " 

*'  Well,  sometimes,  you  see,  I  get  more.  He  gives 
me  all  I  can  take."  It  was  in  her  head  to  ask  if  by 
chance  Bight  were  jealous,  but  she  gave  it  another  turn. 
"We  had  a  big  palaver,  partly  about  you.  He  appre 
ciates." 

"Me?" 

"  Me— first  of  all,  I  think.  All  the  more  that  I've 
had — fancy ! — a  proof  of  my  stuff,  the  despised  and  re 
jected,  as  originally  concocted,  and  that  he  has  now 
seen  it.  I  tried  it  on  again  with  Brains,  the  night  of 
your  thing — sent  it  off  with  your  thing  enclosed  as  a 
rouser.  They  took  it,  by  return,  like  a  shot — you'll  see 
on  Wednesday.  And  if  the  dear  man  lives  till  then,  for 
impatience,  I'm  to  lunch  with  him  that  day." 

"  I  see,"  said  Bight.  "Well,  that  was  what  I  did  it 
for.  It  shows  how  right  I  was." 

They  faced  each  other,  across  their  thick  crockery, 
with  eyes  that  said  more  than  their  words,  and  that, 
above  all,  said,  and  asked,  other  things.  So  she  went 
on  in  a  moment :  "  I  don't  know  what  he  doesn't  ex 
pect.  And  he  thinks  I  can  keep  it  up." 

"  Lunch  with  him  every  Wednesday  ?  " 

"  Oh,  he'd  give  me  my  lunch,  and  more.  It  was  last 
Sunday  that  you  were  right — about  my  sitting  close," 
she  pursued.  "  I'd  have  been  a  pretty  fool  to  jump. 
Suddenly,  I  see,  the  music  begins.  I'm  awfully 
obliged  to  you." 

"  You  feel,"  he  presently  asked,  "  quite  differently — 
so  differently  that  I've  missed  my  chance  ?  I  don't  care 
for  that  serpent,  but  there's  something  else  that  you 
don't  tell  me."  The  young  man,  detached  and  a  little 
spent,  with  his  shoulder  against  the  wall  and  a  hand 
vaguely  playing  over  the  knives,  forks  and  spoons, 
dropped  his  succession  of  sentences  without  an  apparent 
direction.  "  Something  else  has  come  up,  and  you're 

357 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

as  pleased  as  Punch.  Or,  rather,  you're  not  quite  en 
tirely  so,  because  you  can't  goad  me  to  fury.  You  can't 
worry  me  as  much  as  you'd  like.  Marry  me  first,  old 
man,  and  then  see  if  I  mind.  Why  shouldn't  you  keep 
it  up  ? — I  mean  lunching  with  him  ?  "  His  questions 
came  as  in  play  that  was  a  little  pointless,  without  his 
waiting  more  than  a  moment  for  answers;  though  it 
was  not  indeed  that  she  might  not  have  answered  even 
in  the  moment,  had  not  the  pointless  play  been  more 
what  she  wanted.  "  Was  it  at  the  place,"  he  went  on, 
"that  he  took  us  to?" 

"  Dear  no — at  his  flat,  where  I've  been  before.  You'll 
see,  in  Brains,  on  Wednesday.  I  don't  think  I've 
muffed  it — it's  really  rather  there.  But  he  showed  me 
everything  this  time — the  bathroom,  the  refrigerator, 
and  the  machines  for  stretching  his  trousers.  He  has 
nine,  and  in  constant  use." 

"  Nine?  "  said  Bight  gravely. 

"  Nine." 

"Nine  trousers?" 

"  Nine  machines.  I  don't  know  how  many  trou 
sers." 

"Ah,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "that's  a  grave  omission; 
the  want  of  the  information  will  be  felt  and  resented. 
But  does  it  all,  at  any  rate,"  he  asked,  "  sufficiently 
fetch  you  ?  "  After  which,  as  she  didn't  speak,  he 
lapsed  into  helpless  sincerity.  "  Is  it  really,  you  think, 
his  dream  to  secure  you  ?  " 

She  replied,  on  this,  as  if  his  tone  made  it  too  amus 
ing-  "  Quite.  There's  no  mistaking  it.  He  sees  me 
as,  most  days  in  the  year,  pulling  the  wires  and  beating 
the  drum  somewhere ;  that  is  he  sees  me  of  course  not 
exactly  as  writing  about  '  our  home ' — once  I've  got 
one — myself,  but  as  procuring  others  to  do  it  through 
my  being  (as  you've  made  him  believe)  in  with  the 
Organs  of  Public  Opinion.  He  doesn't  see,  if  I'm  half 
decent,  why  there  shouldn't  be  something  about  him 


THE   PAPERS 

every  day  in  the  week.  He's  all  right,  and  he's  all 
ready.  And  who,  after  all,  can  do  him  so  well  as  the 
partner  of  his  flat?  It's  like  making,  in  one  of  those 
big  domestic  siphons,  the  luxury  of  the  poor,  your  own 
soda-water.  It  comes  cheaper,  and  it's  always  on  the 
sideboard.  '  Vichy  cliez  soiJ  The  interviewer  at 
home." 

Her  companion  took  it  in.  "  Your  place  is  on  my 
sideboard — you're  really  a  first-class  fizz!  He  steps 
then,  at  any  rate,  into  Beadel-Muffet's  place." 

"  That,"  Maud  assented,  "  is  what  he  would  like  to 
do."  And  she  knew  more  than  ever  there  was  some 
thing  to  wait  for. 

"  It's  a  lovely  opening,"  Bight  returned.  But  he 
still  said,  for  the  moment,  nothing  else ;  as  if,  charged 
to  the  brim  though  he  had  originally  been,  she  had 
rather  led  his  thought  away. 

"  What  have  you  done  with  poor  Beadel?  "  she  con 
sequently  asked.  "  What  is  it,  in  the  name  of  good 
ness,  you're  doing  to  him?  It's  worse  than  ever." 

"  Of  course  it's  worse  than  ever." 

"  He  capers,"  said  Maud,  "  on  every  housetop — he 
jumps  out  of  every  bush."  With  which  her  anxiety 
really  broke  out.  "  Is  it  you  that  are  doing  it  ?  " 

"  If  you  mean  am  I  seeing  him,  I  certainly  am.  I'm 
seeing  nobody  else.  I  assure  you  he's  spread  thick." 

"  But  you're  acting  for  him  ?  " 

Bight  waited.  "  Five  hundred  people  are  acting  for 
him ;  but  the  difficulty  is  that  what  he  calls  the  '  terrific 
forces  of  publicity  ' — by  which  he  means  ten  thousand 
other  persons — are  acting  against  him.  We've  all  in 
fact  been  turned  on — to  turn  everything  off,  and  that's 
exactly  the  job  that  makes  the  biggest  noise.  It  ap 
pears  everywhere,  in  every  kind  of  connection  and  every 
kind  of  type,  that  Sir  A.  B.  C.  Beadel-Muffet  K.C.B., 
M.P.,  desires  to  cease  to  appear  anywhere;  and  then  it 
appears  that  his  desiring  to  cease  to  appear  is  observed 

359 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

to  conduce  directly  to  his  more  tremendously  appearing, 
or  certainly,  and  in  the  most  striking  manner,  to  his 
not  in  the  least  ^appearing.  The  workshop  of  silence 
roars  like  the  Zoo  at  dinner-time.  He  can't  disappear ; 
he  hasn't  weight  enough  to  sink;  the  splash  the  diver 
makes,  you  know,  tells  where  he  is.  If  you  ask  me 
what  I'm  doing,"  Bight  wound  up,  "  I'm  holding  him 
under  water.  But  we're  in  the  middle  of  the  pond,  the 
banks  are  thronged  with  spectators,  and  I'm  expecting 
from  day  to  day^  to  see  stands  erected  and  gate-money 
taken.  There,'rhe  wearily  smiled,  "  you  have  it.  Be 
sides,"  he  then  added  with  an  odd  change  of  tone,  "  I 
rather  think  you'll  see  to-morrow." 

He  had  made  her  at  last  horribly  nervous.  "  What 
shall  I  see?". 

"  It  will  all  be  out" 

"  Then  why  shouldn't  you  tell  me?  " 

"  Well,"  the  young  man  said,  "  he  has  disappeared. 
There  you  are.  I  mean  personally.  He's  not  to  be 
found.  But  nothing  could  make  more,  you  see,  for 
ubiquity.  The  country  will  ring  with  it.  He  van 
ished  on  Tuesday  night — was  then  last  seen  at  his  club. 
Since  then  he  has  given  no  sign.  How  can  a  man  dis 
appear  who  does  that  sort  of  thing?  It  is,  as  you  say, 
to  caper  on  the  housetops.  But  it  will  only  be  known 
to-night." 

"  Since  when,  then,"  Maud  asked,  "  have  you  known 
it?" 

"  Since  three  o'clock  to-day.  But  I've  kept  it.  I 
am — a  while  longer — keeping  it." 

She  wondered ;  she  was  full  of  fears.  "What  do  you 
expect  to  get  for  it  ?  " 

"  Nothing — if  you  spoil  my  market.  I  seem  to  make 
out  that  you  want  to." 

She  gave  this  no  heed;  she  had  her  thought.  "  Why 
then  did  you  three  days  ago  wire  me  a  mystic  word?  " 

"Mystic ?" 

360 


THE   PAPERS 

"  What  do  you  call  '  Larks  '?  " 

"  Oh,  I  remember.  Well,  it  was  because  I  saw  larks 
coming ;  because  I  saw,  I  mean,  what  has  happened.  I 
was  sure  it  would  have  to  happen." 

"  And  what  the  mischief  is  it?  " 

Bight  smiled.  "  Why,  what  I  tell  you.  That  he 
has  gone." 

"Gone  where?" 

"  Simply  bolted  to  parts  unknown.  '  Where  '  is  what 
nobody  who  belongs  to  him  is  able  in  the  least  to  say, 
or  seems  likely  to  be  able." 

"  Any  more  than  why?  " 

"  Any  more  than  why." 

"  Only  you  are  able  to  say  that?  " 

"  Well,"  said  Bight,  "  I  can  say  what  has  so  lately 
stared  me  in  the  face,  what  he  has  been  thrusting  at  me 
in  all  its  grotesqueness :  his  desire  for  a  greater  privacy 
worked  through  the  Papers  themselves.  He  came  to 
me  with  it,"  the  young  man  presently  added.  "  I 
didn't  go  to  him." 

"  And  he  trusted  you,"  Maud  replied. 

"  Well,  you  see  what  I  have  given  him — the  very 
flower  of  my  genius.  What  more  do  you  want  ?  I'm 
spent,  seedy,  sore.  I'm  sick,"  Bight  declared,  "  of  his 
beastly  funk." 

Maud's  eyes,  in  spite  of  it,  were  still  a  little  hard.  "  Is 
he  thoroughly  sincere?  " 

"  Good  God,  no !  How  can  he  be?  Only  trying  it — 
as  a  cat,  for  a  jump,  tries  too  smooth  a  wall.  He  drops 
straight  back." 

'Then  isn't  his  funk  real?" 

"  As  real  as  he  himself  is." 

Maud  wondered.     "  Isn't  his  flight ?  " 

"  That's  what  we  shall  see  !  " 

"  Isn't,"  she  continued,  "  his  reason?  " 

"  Ah,"  he  laughed  out,  "  there  you  are  again !  " 

But  she  had  another  thought  and  was  not  discour 
aged.  "Mayn't  he  be,  honestly,  mad?" 

361 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

"  Mad — oh  yes.  But  not,  I  think,  honestly.  He's 
not  honestly  anything  in  the  world  but  the  Beadel- 
Muffet  of  our  delight." 

"  Your  delight,"  Maud  observed  after  a  moment, 
"  revolts  me."  And  then  she  said :  "  When  did  you 
last  see  him?  " 

"  On  Tuesday  at  six,  love.     I  was  one  of  the  last." 

"  Decidedly,  too,  then,  I  judge,  one  of  the  worst." 
She  gave  him  her  idea.  "  You  hounded  him  on." 

"  I  reported,"  said  Bight,  "  success.  Told  him  how 
it  was  going." 

"  Oh,  I  can  see  you !     So  that  if  he's  dead " 

"  Well?  "  asked  Bight  blandly. 

"  His  blood  is  on  your  hands." 

He  eyed  his  hands  a  moment.  "  They  are  dirty  for 
him !  But  now,  darling,"  he  went  on,  "  be  so  good  as 
to  show  me  yours." 

"  Tell  me  first,"  she  objected,  "  what  you  believe. 
Is  it  suicide  ?  " 

"  I  think  that's  the  thing  for  us  to  make  it.  Till 
somebody,"  he  smiled,  "  makes  it  something  else."  And 
he  showed  how  he  warmed  to  the  view.  "  There  are 
weeks  of  it,  dearest,  yet." 

He  leaned  more  toward  her,  with  his  elbows  on  the 
table,  and  in  this  position,  moved  by  her  extreme  grav 
ity,  he  lightly  flicked  her  chin  with  his  finger.  She 
threw  herself,  still  grave,  back  from  his  touch,  but  they 
remained  thus  a  while  closely  confronted.  "  Well," 
she  at  last  remarked,  "  I  sha'n't  pity  you." 

"  You  make  it,  then,  everyone  except  me  ?  " 

"  I  mean,"  she  continued,  "  if  you  do  have  to  loathe 
yourself." 

"  Oh,  I  sha'n't  miss  it."  And  then  as  if  to  show  how 
little,  "  I  did  mean  it,  you  know,  at  Richmond,"  he  de 
clared. 

"  I  won't  have  you  if  you've  killed  him,"  she  present 
ly  returned. 

362 


THE   PAPERS 

"  You'll  decide  in  that  case  for  the  nine?  "  And  as 
the  allusion,  with  its  funny  emphasis,  left  her  blank: 
"  You  want  to  wear  all  the  trousers?  " 

"  You  deserve,"  she  said,  when  light  came,  "  that  I 
should  take  him."  And  she  kept  it  up.  "  It's  a  lovely 
flat." 

Well,  he  could  do  as  much.  "  Nine,  I  suppose,  ap 
peals  to  you  as  the  number  of  the  muses  ?  " 

This  short  passage,  remarkably,  for  all  its  irony, 
brought  them  together  again,  to  the  extent  at  least  of 
leaving  Maud's  elbows  on  the  table  and  of  keeping 
her  friend,  now  a  little  back  in  his  chair,  firm  while  he 
listened  to  her.  So  the  girl  came  out.  "  I've  seen 
Mrs.  Chorner  three  times.  I  wrote  that  night,  after 
our  talk  at  Richmond,  asking  her  to  oblige.  And  I  put 
on  cheek  as  I  had  never,  never  put  it.  I  said  the  public 
would  be  so  glad  to  hear  from  her  *  on  the  occasion  of 
her  engagement.' ' 

"  Do  you  call  that  cheek?  "  Bight  looked  amused. 
"  She  at  any  rate  rose  straight." 

"  No,  she  rose  crooked ;  but  she  rose.  What  you  had 
told  me  there  in  the  Park — well,  immediately  hap 
pened.  She  did  consent  to  see  me,  and  so  far  you  had 
been  right  in  keeping  me  up  to  it.  But  what  do  you 
think  it  was  for  ?  " 

'  To  show  you  her  flat,  her  tub,  her  petticoats  ?  " 

"  She  doesn't  live  in  a  flat;  she  lives  in  a  house  of  her 
own,  and  a  jolly  good  one,  in  Green  Street,  Park  Lane ; 
though  I  did,  as  happened,  see  her  tub,  which  is  a 
dream — all  marble  and  silver,  like  a  kind  of  a  swagger 
sarcophagus,  a  thing  for  the  Wallace  Collection;  and 
though  her  petticoats,  as  she  first  shows,  seem  all  that, 
if  you  wear  petticoats  yourself,  you  can  look  at. 
There's  no  doubt  of  her  money — given  her  place  and 
her  things,  and  given  her  appearance  too,  poor  dear, 
which  would  take  some  doing." 

"  She  squints  ?  "  Bight  sympathetically  asked. 

363 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  She's  so  ugly  that  she  has  to  be  rich — she  couldn't 
afford  it  on  less  than  five  thousand  a  year.  As  it  is, 
I  could  well  see,  she  can  afford  anything — even  such  a 
nose.  But  she's  funny  and  decent;  sharp,  but  a  really 
good  sort.  And  they're  not  engaged." 

"  She  told  you  so  ?     Then  there  you  are  !  " 
"  It  all  depends,"  Maud  went  on;  "  and  you  don't 
know  where  I  am  at  all.     /  know  what  it  depends  on." 
'  Then  there  you  are  again  !     It's  a  mine  of  gold." 
"  Possibly,  but  not  in  your  sense.     She  wouldn't 
give  me  the  first  word  of  an  interview — it  wasn't  for 
that  she  received  me.     It  was  for  something  much  bet 
ter." 

Well,  Bight  easily  guessed.     "  For  my  job?  " 
"  To  see  what  can  be  done.     She  loathes  his  pub 
licity." 

The  young  man's  face  lighted.    "  She  told  you  so?  " 
"  She  received  me  on  purpose  to  tell  me." 
"  Then  why  do  you  question  my  '  larks  '  ?     What 
do  you  want  more?  " 

"  I  want  nothing — with  what    I  have :    nothing,    I 
mean,  but  to  help  her.     We  made  friends — I  like  her. 
And  she  likes  me"  said  Maud  Blandy. 
"  Like  Mortimer  Marshal,  precisely." 
"  No,  precisely  not  like  Mortimer  Marshal.  I  caught, 
on  the  spot,  her  idea — that  was  what  took  her.     Her 
idea  is  that  I  can  help  her — help  her  to  keep  them  quiet 
about  Beadel :  for  which  purpose  I  seem  to  have  struck 
her  as  falling  from  the  skies,  just  at  the  right  moment, 
into  her  lap." 

Howard  Bight  followed,  yet  lingered  by  the  way. 

"  To  keep  whom  quiet ?  " 

"  Why,  the  beastly  Papers — what  we've  been  talk 
ing  about.  She  wants  him  straight  out  of  them — 
straight-" 

She  too  ?  "  Bight  wondered.     "  Then  she's  in  ter 


ror? 


364 


THE   PAPERS 

"  No,  not  in  terror — or  it  wasn't  that  when  I  last  saw 
her.  But  in  mortal  disgust.  She  feels  it  has  gone  too 
far — which  is  what  she  wanted  me,  as  an  honest,  decent, 
likely  young  woman,  up  to  my  neck  in  it,  as  she  sup 
posed,  to  understand  from  her.  My  relation  with  her 
is  now  that  I  do  understand  and  that  if  an  improvement 
takes  place  I  sha'n't  have  been  the  worse  for  it.  There 
fore  you  see,"  Maud  went  on,  "  you  simply  cut  my 
throat  when  you  prevent  improvement." 

"  Well,  my  dear,"  her  friend  returned,  "  I  won't  let 
you  bleed  to  death."  And  he  showed,  with  this,  as 
confessedly  struck.  "  She  doesn't  then,  you  think, 
know ?" 

"Know  what?" 

"  Why,  what,  about  him,  there  may  be  to  be  known. 
Doesn't  know  of  his  flight." 

"  She  didn't — certainly." 

"  Nor  of  anything  to  make  it  likely?  " 

"  What  you  call  his  queer  reason?  No — she  named 
it  to  me  no  more  than  you  have ;  though  she  does  men 
tion,  distinctly,  that  he  himself  hates,  or  pretends  to 
hate,  the  exhibition  daily  made  of  him." 

"  She  speaks  of  it,"  Bight  asked,  "  as  pretend 
ing-  -?'r 

Maud  straightened  it  out.  "  She  feels  him — that 
she  practically  told  me — as  rather  ridiculous.  She 
honestly  has  her  feeling ;  and,  upon  my  word,  it's  what 
I  like  her  for.  Her  stomach  has  turned  and  she  has 
made  it  her  condition.  '  Muzzle  your  Press,'  she 
says ;  '  then  we'll  talk.'  She  gives  him  three  months — 
she'll  give  him  even  six.  And  this,  meanwhile — when 
he  comes  to  you — is  how  you  forward  the  muzzling." 

"  The  Press,  my  child,"  Bight  said,  "  is  the  watch 
dog  of  civilization,  and  the  watchdog  happens  to  be — it 
can't  be  helped — in  a  chronic  state  of  rabies.  Muzzling 
is  easy  talk;  one  can  but  keep  the  animal  on  the  run. 
Mrs.  Chorner,  however,"  he  added,  "  seems  a  figure  of 
fable." 

365 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  It's  what  I  told  you  she  would  have  to  be  when, 
some  time  back,  you  threw  out,  as  a  pure  hypothesis,  to 
supply  the  man  with  a  motive,  your  exact  vision  of  her. 
Your  motive  has  come  true,"  Maud  went  on — "  with 
the  difference  only,  if  I  understand  you,  that  this  doesn't 
appear  the  whole  of  it.  That  doesn't  matter  " — she 
frankly  paid  him  a  tribute.  "  Your  forecast  was  in 
spiration." 

"  A  stroke  of  genius  " — he  had  been  the  first  to  feel 
it.  But  there  were  matters  less  clear.  "  When  did 
you  see  her  last?  " 

"  Four  days  ago.     It  was  the  third  time." 

"  And  even  then  she  didn't  imagine  the  truth  about 
him?" 

"  I  don't  know,  you  see,"  said  Maud,  "  what  you  call 
the  truth." 

"  Well,  that  he — quite  by  that  time — didn't  know 
where  the  deuce  to  turn.  That's  truth  enough." 

Maud  made  sure.  "  I  don't  see  how  she  can  have 
known  it  and  not  have  been  upset.  She  wasn't,"  said 
the  girl,  "  upset.  She  isn't  upset.  But  she's  original." 

"  Well,  poor  thing,"  Bight  remarked,  "  she'll  have 
to  be?" 

"Original?" 

"  Upset.  Yes,  and  original  too,  if  she  doesn't  give 
up  the  job."  It  had  held  him  an  instant — but  there 
were  many  things.  "  She  sees  the  wild  ass  he  is,  and 

yet  she's  willing ?" 

'  Willing '  is  just  what  I  asked  you  three  months 
ago,"  Maud  returned,  "  how  she  could  be." 

He  had  lost  it — he  tried  to  remember.  "  What  then 
did  I  say?" 

"  Well,  practically,  that  women  are  idiots.  Also,  I 
believe,  that  he's  a  dazzling  beauty." 

"  Ah  yes,  he  is,  poor  wretch,  though  beauty  to-day 
in  distress." 

"  Then  there  you  are,"  said  Maud.     They  had  got 


THE   PAPERS 

up,  as  at  the  end  of  their  story,  but  they  stood  a  mo 
ment  while  he  waited  for  change.  "  If  it  comes  out," 
the  girl  dropped,  "  that  will  save  him.  If  he's  dishon 
oured — as  I  see  her — she'll  have  him,  because  then  he 
won't  be  ridiculous.  And  I  can  understand  it." 

Bight  looked  at  her  in  such  appreciation  that  he  for 
got,  as  he  pocketed  it,  to  glance  at  his  change.  "  Oh, 
you  creatures !  " 

"Idiots,  aren't  we?" 

Bight  let  the  question  pass,  but  still  with  his  eyes  on 
her.  "  You  ought  to  want  him  to  be  dishonoured." 

"  I  can't  want  him,  then — if  he's  to  get  the  good  of 
it— to  be  dead." 

Still  for  a  little  he  looked  at  her.  "And  if  you're  to 
get  the  good  ?  "  But  she  had  turned  away,  and  he  went 
with  her  to  the  door,  before  which,  when  they  had 
passed  out,  they  had  in  the  side-street,  a  backwater  to 
the  flood  of  the  Strand,  a  further  sharp  colloquy.  They 
were  alone,  the  small  street  for  a  moment  empty,  and 
they  felt  at  first  that  they  had  adjourned  to  a  greater 
privacy,  of  which,  for  that  matter,  he  took  prompt  ad 
vantage.  "  You're  to  lunch  again  with  the  man  of  the 
flat?" 

"  Wednesday,  as  I  say;  1.45." 

"  Then  oblige  me  by  stopping  away." 

"  You  don't  like  it?  "  Maud  asked. 

"  Oblige  me,  oblige  me,"  he  repeated. 

"  And  disoblige  him?  " 

"  Chuck  him.     We've  started  him.     It's  enough." 

Well,  the  girl  but  wanted  to  be  fair.  "  It's  you  who 
started  him;  so  I  admit  you're  quits." 

"  That  then  started  you — made  Brains  repent ;  so  you 
see  what  you  both  owe  me.  I  let  the  creature  off,  but 
I  hold  you  to  your  debt.  There's  only  one  way  for  you 
to  meet  it."  And  then  as  she  but  looked  into  the  roar 
ing  Strand :  "  With  worship."  It  made  her,  after  a 
minute,  meet  his  eyes,  but  something  just  then  occurred 

367 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

that  stayed  any  word  on  the  lips  of  either.  A  sound 
reached  their  ears,  as  yet  unheeded,  the  sound  of  news 
boys  in  the  great  thoroughfare  shouting  "  extra-spe 
cials  "  and  mingling  with  the  shout  a  catch  that  startled 
them.  The  expression  in  their  eyes  quickened  as  they 
heard,  borne  on  the  air,  "  Mysterious  Disappearance 

!  "  and  then  lost  it  in  the  hubbub.  It  was  easy 

to  complete  the  cry,  and  Bight  himself  gasped.  "  Bea- 
del-Muffet?  Confound  them !  " 

"  Already?  "     Maud  had  turned  positively  pale. 

"  They've  got  it  first — be  hanged  to  them  !  " 

Bight  gave  a  laugh — a  tribute  to  their  push — but  her 
hand  was  on  his  arm  for  a  sign  to  listen  again.  It  was 
there,  in  the  raucous  throats ;  it  was  there,  for  a  penny, 
under  the  lamps  and  in  the  thick  of  the  stream  that 
stared  and  passed  and  left  it.  They  caught  the  whole 
thing — "  Prominent  Public  Man  !  "  And  there  was 
something  brutal  and  sinister  in  the  way  it  was  given 
to  the  flaring  night,  to  the  other  competing  sounds, 
to  the  general  hardness  of  hearing  and  sight  which  was 
yet,  on  London  pavements,  compatible  with  an  interest 
sufficient  for  cynicism.  He  had  been,  poor  Beadel, 
public  and  prominent,  but  he  had  never  affected  Maud 
Blandy  at  least  as  so  marked  with  this  character  as 
while  thus  loudly  committed  to  extinction.  It  was 
horrid — it  was  tragic;  yet  her  lament  for  him  was  dry. 
"  If  he's  gone  I'm  dished." 

"  Oh,  he's  gone — now,"  said  Bight. 

"  I  mean  if  he's  dead." 

"  Well,  perhaps  he  isn't.  I  see,"  Bight  added,  "what 
you  do  mean.  If  he's  dead  you  can't  kill  him." 

"  Oh,  she  wants  him  alive,"  said  Maud. 

"  Otherwise  she  can't  chuck  him?  " 

To  which  the  girl,  however,  anxious  and  wondering, 
made  no  direct  reply.  "  Good-bye  to  Mrs.  Chorner. 
And  I  owe  it  to  you." 

"  Ah,  my  love !  "  he  vaguely  appealed. 


THE   PAPERS 

"  Yes,  it's  you  who  have  destroyed  him,  and  it  makes 
up  for  what  you've  done  for  me." 

"  I've  done  it,  you  mean,  against  you  ?  I  didn't 
know,"  he  said,  "  you'd  take  it  so  hard." 

Again,  as  he  spoke,  the  cries  sounded  out :  "  Mys 
terious  Disappearance  of  Prominent  Public  Man  !  "  It 
seemed  to  swell  as  they  listened ;  Maud  started  with  im 
patience.  "  I  hate  it  too  much,"  she  said,  and  quitted 
him  to  join  the  crowd. 

He  was  quickly  at  her  side,  however,  and  before  she 
reached  the  Strand  he  had  brought  her  again  to  a 
pause.  "  Do  you  mean  you  hate  it  so  much  you  won't 
have  me  ?  " 

It  had  pulled  her  up  short,  and  her  answer  was  pro 
portionately  straight.  "  I  won't  have  you  if  he's 
dead." 

"  Then  will  you  if  he's  not?  " 

At  this  she  looked  at  him  hard.  "  Do  you  know, 
first?" 

"  No— blessed  if  I  do." 

"  On  your  honour  ?  " 

"  On  my  honour." 

"  Well,"  she  said  after  an  hesitation,  "  if  she  doesn't 
drop  me : 

"  It's  an  understood  thing?  "  he  pressed. 

But  again  she  hung  fire.    "  Well,  produce  him  first." 

They  stood  there  striking  their  bargain,  and  it  was 
made,  by  the  long  look  they  exchanged,  a  question  of 
good  faith.  "  I'll  produce  him,"  said  Howard  Bight. 

VI 

IF  it  had  not  been  a  disaster,  Beadel-Muffet's  plunge 
into  the  obscure,  it  would  have  been  a  huge  success ;  so 
large  a  space  did  the  prominent  public  man  occupy,  for 
the  next  few  days,  in  the  Papers,  so  near  did  he  come, 
nearer  certainly  than  ever  before,  to  supplanting  other 

369 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

topics.     The  question  of  his  whereabouts,  of  his  ante 
cedents,  of  his  habits,  of  his  possible  motives,  of  his 
probable,  or  improbable,  embarrassments,  fairly  raged, 
from  day  to  day  and  from  hour  to  hour,  making  the 
Strand,  for  our  two  young  friends,  quite  fiercely,  quite 
cruelly  vociferous.     They  met  again  promptly,  in  the 
thick  of  the  uproar,  and  no  other  eyes    could    have 
scanned  the  current  rumours  and  remarks  so  eagerly  as 
Maud's  unless  it  had  been  those  of  Maud's  compan 
ion.     The  rumours  and  remarks  were    mostly    very 
wonderful,  and  all  of  a  nature  to  sharpen  the  excite 
ment  produced  in  the  comrades  by  their  being  already, 
as  they  felt,  "  in  the  know."     Even  for  the  girl  this 
sense  existed,  so  that  she  could  smile  at  wild  surmises ; 
she  struck  herself  as  knowing  much  more  than  she  did, 
especially  as,  with  the  alarm  once  given,  she  abstained, 
delicately  enough,  from    worrying,    from    catechising 
Bight.     She  only  looked  at  him  as  to  say  "  See,  while 
the  suspense  lasts,  how  generously  I  spare  you,"  and 
her  attitude  was  not  affected  by  the  interested  promise 
he  had  made  her.     She  believed  he  knew  more  than  he 
said,  though  he  had  sworn  as  to  what  he  didn't;  she 
saw  him  in  short  as  holding  some  threads  but  having 
lost  others,  and  his  state  of  mind,  so  far  as  she  could 
read  it,  represented  in  equal  measure  assurances  unsup 
ported  and  anxieties  unconfessed.       He  would  have 
liked  to  pass  for  having,  on  cynical  grounds,  and  for 
the  mere  ironic  beauty  of  it,  believed  that  the  hero  of  the 
hour  was  only,  as  he  had  always  been,  "  up  to  "  some 
thing  from  which  he  would  emerge  more  than  ever 
glorious,  or  at  least  conspicuous;  but,    knowing    the 
gentleman  was  more  than  anything,  more  than  all  else, 
asinine,  he  was  not  deprived  of  ground  in  which  fear 
could  abundantly  grow.     If  Beadel,  in  other  words, 
was  ass  enough,  as  was  conceivable,  to  be  working  the 
occasion,  he  was  by  the  same  token  ass  enough  to  have 
lost  control  of  it,  to  have  committed  some  folly  from 

370 


THE   PAPERS 

which  even  fools  don't  rebound.  That  was  the  spark 
of  suspicion  lurking  in  the  young  man's  ease,  and  that, 
Maud  knew,  explained  something  else. 

The  family  and  friends  had  but  too  promptly  been  ap 
proached,  been  besieged;  yet  Bight,  in  all  the  prompt 
ness,  had  markedly  withdrawn  from  the  game — had 
had,  one  could  easily  judge,  already  too  much  to  do 
with  it.  Who  but  he,  otherwise,  would  have  been  so 
naturally  let  loose  upon  the  forsaken  home,  the  bewil 
dered  circle,  the  agitated  club,  the  friend  who  had  last 
conversed  with  the  eminent  absentee,  the  waiter,  in  ex 
clusive  halls,  who  had  served  him  with  five  o'clock  tea, 
the  porter,  in  august  Pall  Mall,  who  had  called  his  last 
cab,  the  cabman,  supremely  privileged,  who  had  driven 
him — where  ?  "  The  Last  Cab  "  would,  as  our  young 
woman  reflected,  have  been  a  heading  so  after  her 
friend's  own  heart,  and  so  consonant  with  his  genius, 
that  it  took  all  her  discretion  not  to  ask  him  how  he  had 
resisted  it.  She  didn't  ask,  she  but  herself  noted  the 
title  for  future  use — she  would  have  at  least  got  that, 
"  The  Last  Cab,"  out  of  the  business ;  and,  as  the  days 
went  by  and  the  extra-specials  swarmed,  the  situation 
between  them  swelled  with  all  the  unspoken.  Matters 
that  were  grave  depended  on  it  for  each — and  nothing 
so  much,  for  instance,  as  her  seeing  Mrs.  Chorner  again. 
To  see  that  lady  as  things  had  been  had  meant  that  the 
poor  woman  might  have  been  helped  to  believe  in  her. 
Believing  in  her  she  would  have  paid  her,  and  Maud, 
disposed  as  she  was,  really  had  felt  capable  of  earning 
the  pay.  Whatever,  as  the  case  stood,  was  caused  to 
hang  in  the  air,  nothing  dangled  more  free  than  the 
profit  derivable  from  muzzling  the  Press.  With  the 
watchdog  to  whom  Bight  had  compared  it  barking  for 
dear  life,  the  moment  was  scarcely  adapted  for  calling 
afresh  upon  a  person  who  had  offered  a  reward  for 
silence.  The  only  silence,  as  we  say,  was  in  the  girl's 
not  mentioning  to  her  friend  how  these  embarrassments 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

affected  her.  Mrs.  Chorner  was  a  person  she  liked — 
a  connection  more  to  her  taste  than  any  she  had  pro 
fessionally  made,  and  the  thought  of  her  now  on  the 
rack,  tormented  with  suspense,  might  well  have  brought 
to  her  lips  a  "  See  there  what  you've  done  !  " 

There  was,  for  that  matter,  in  Bight's  face — he 
couldn't  keep  it  out — precisely  the  look  of  seeing  it; 
which  was  one  of  her  reasons  too  for  not  insisting  on 
her  wrong.  If  he  couldn't  conceal  it  this  was  a  part 
of  the  rest  of  the  unspoken ;  he  didn't  allude  to  the  lady 
lest  it  might  be  too  sharply  said  to  him  that  it  was  on 
her  account  he  should  most  blush.  Last  of  all  he  was 
hushed  by  the  sense  of  what  he  had  himself  said  when 
the  news  first  fell  on  their  ears.  His  promise  to  "  pro 
duce  "  the  fugitive  was  still  in  the  air,  but  with  every 
day  that  passed  the  prospect  turned  less  to  redemption. 
Therefore  if  her  own  promise,  on  a  different  head,  de 
pended  on  it,  he  was  naturally  not  in  a  hurry  to  bring 
the  question  to  a  test.  So  it  was  accordingly  that  they 
but  read  the  Papers  and  looked  at  each  other.  Maud 
felt  in  truth  that  these  organs  had  never  been  so  worth 
it,  nor  either  she  or  her  friend — whatever  the  size  of  old 
obligations — so  much  beholden  to  them.  They  helped 
them  to  wait,  and  the  better,  really,  the  longer  the  mys 
tery  lasted.  It  grew  of  course  daily  richer,  adding  to 
its  mass  as  it  went  and  multiplying  its  features,  loom 
ing  especially  larger  through  the  cloud  of  correspond 
ence,  communication,  suggestion,  supposition,  specula 
tion,  with  which  it  was  presently  suffused.  Theories 
and  explanations  sprouted  at  night  and  bloomed  in  the 
morning,  to  be  overtopped  at  noon  by  a  still  thicker  crop 
and  to  achieve  by  evening  the  density  of  a  tropical  for 
est.  These,  again,  were  the  green  glades  in  which  our 
young  friends  wandered. 

Under  the  impression  of  the  first  night's  shock  Maud 
had  written  to  Mortimer  Marshal  to  excuse  herself 
from  her  engagement  to  luncheon — a  step  of  which 

372 


THE   PAPERS 

she  had  promptly  advised  Bight  as  a  sign  of  her  playing 
fair.  He  took  it,  she  could  see,  for  what  it  was  worth, 
but  she  could  see  also  how  little  he  now  cared.  He  was 
thinking  of  the  man  with  whose  strange  agitation  he 
had  so  cleverly  and  recklessly  played,  and,  in  the  face 
of  the  catastrophe  of  which  they  were  still  so  likely  to 
have  news,  the  vanities  of  smaller  fools,  the  conven 
iences  of  first-class  flats,  the  memory  of  Chippendale 
teas,  ceased  to  be  actual  or  ceased  at  any  rate  to  be  im 
portunate.  Her  old  interview,  furbished  into  fresh 
ness,  had  appeared,  on  its  Wednesday,  in  Brains,  but 
she  had  not  received  in  person  the  renewed  homage  of 
its  author — she  had  only,  once  more,  had  the  vision  of 
his  inordinate  purchase  and  diffusion  of  the  precious 
number.  It  was  a  vision,  however,  at  which  neither 
Bight  nor  she  smiled;  it  was  funny  on  so  poor  a 
scale  compared  with  their  other  show.  But  it  be 
fell  that  when  this  latter  had,  for  ten  days,  kept  being 
funny  to  the  tune  that  so  lengthened  their  faces, 
the  poor  gentleman  glorified  in  Brains  succeeded 
in  making  it  clear  that  he  was  not  easily  to  be 
dropped.  He  wanted  now,  evidently,  as  the  girl 
said  to  herself,  to  live  at  concert  pitch,  and  she 
gathered,  from  three  or  four  notes,  to  which,  at  short 
intervals,  he  treated  her,  that  he  was  watching  in 
anxiety  for  reverberations  not  as  yet  perceptible.  His 
expectation  of  results  from  what  our  young  couple  had 
done  for  him  would,  as  always,  have  been  a  thing  for 
pity  with  a  young  couple  less  imbued  with  the  comic 
sense;  though  indeed  it  would  also  have  been  a  comic 
thing  for  a  young  couple  less  attentive  to  a  different 
drama.  Disappointed  of  the  girl's  company  at  home, 
the  author  of  Corisanda  had  proposed  fresh  appoint 
ments,  which  she  had  desired  at  the  moment,  and  in 
deed  more  each  time,  not  to  take  up ;  to  the  extent  even 
that,  catching  sight  of  him,  unperceived,  on  one  of  these 
occasions,  in  her  inveterate  Strand,  she  checked  on  the 

373 


THE   BETTER  SORT 

spot  a  first  impulse  to  make  herself  apparent.  He  was 
before  her,  in  the  crowd,  and  going  the  same  way.  He 
had  stopped  a  little  to  look  at  a  shop,  and  it  was  then 
that  she  swerved  in  time  not  to  pass  close  to  him.  She 
turned  and  reversed,  conscious  and  convinced  that  he 
was,  as  she  mentally  put  it,  on  the  prowl  for  her.  She 
herself,  poor  creature — as  she  also  mentally  put  it — she 
herself  was  shamelessly  on  the  prowl,  but  it  wasn't,  for 
her  self-respect,  to  get  herself  puffed,  it  wasn't  to  pick 
up  a  personal  advantage.  It  was  to  pick  up  news  of 
Beadel-MufTet,  to  be  near  the  extra-specials,  and  it  was, 
also— as  to  this  she  was  never  blind — to  cultivate  that 
nearness  by  chances  of  Howard  Bight.  The  blessing 
of  blindness,  in  truth,  at  this  time,  she  scantily  en 
joyed — being  perfectly  aware  of  the  place  occupied,  in 
her  present  attitude  to  that  young  man,  by  the  simple 
impossibility  of  not  seeing  him.  She  had  done  with 
him,  certainly,  if  he  had  killed  Beadel,  and  nothing  was 
now  growing  so  fast  as  the  presumption  in  favour  of 
some  catastrophe,  yet  shockingly  to  be  revealed,  en 
acted  somewhere  in  desperate  darkness — though  prob 
ably  "  on  lines,"  as  the  Papers  said,  anticipated  by  none 
of  the  theorists  in  their  own  columns,  any  more  than 
by  clever  people  at  the  clubs,  where  the  betting  was  so 
heavy.  She  had  done  with  him,  indubitably,  but  she 
had  not — it  was  equally  unmistakeable — done  with  let 
ting  him  see  how  thoroughly  she  would  have  done ;  or, 
to  feel  about  it  otherwise,  she  was  laying  up  treasure 
in  time — as  against  the  privations  of  the  future.  She 
was  affected  moreover — perhaps  but  half-consciously — 
by  another  consideration;  her  attitude  to  Mortimer 
Marshal  had  turned  a  little  to  fright;  she  wondered, 
uneasily,  at  impressions  she  might  have  given  him; 
and  she  had  it,  finally,  on  her  mind  that,  whether  or  no 
the  vain  man  believed  in  them,  there  must  be  a  limit  to 
the  belief  she  had  communicated  to  her  friend.  He 
was  her  friend,  after  all — whatever  should  happen ;  and 

374 


THE   PAPERS 

there  were  things  that,  even  in  that  hampered  charac 
ter,  she  couldn't  allow  him  to  suppose.  It  was  a  queer 
business  now,  in  fact,  for  her  to  ask  herself  if  she, 
Maud  Blandy,  had  produced  on  any  sane  human  sense 
an  effect  of  flirtation. 

She  saw  herself  in  this  possibility  as  in  some  gro 
tesque  reflector,  a  full-length  looking-glass  of  the  in 
ferior  quality  that  deforms  and  discolours.  It  made 
her,  as  a  flirt,  a  figure  for  frank  derision,  and  she  en 
tertained,  honest  girl,  none  of  the  self-pity  that  would 
have  spared  her  a  shade  of  this  sharpened  conscious 
ness,  have  taken  an  inch  from  facial  proportion  where 
it  would  have  been  missed  with  advantage,  or  added 
one  in  such  other  quarters  as  would  have  welcomed  the 
gift.  She  might  have  counted  the  hairs  of  her  head,  for 
any  wish  she  could  have  achieved  to  remain  vague 
about  them,  just  as  she  might  have  rehearsed,  disheart 
ened,  postures  of  grace,  for  any  dream  she  could  com 
pass  of  having  ever  accidentally  struck  one.  Void,  in 
short,  of  a  personal  illusion,  exempt  with  an  exemption 
which  left  her  not  less  helplessly  aware  of  where  her 
hats  and  skirts  and  shoes  failed,  than  of  where  her  nose 
and  mouth  and  complexion,  and,  above  all,  where  her 
poor  figure,  without  a  scrap  of  drawing,  did,  she 
blushed  to  bethink  herself  that  she  might  have  affected 
her  young  man  as  really  bragging  of  a  conquest.  Her 
other  young  man's  pursuit  of  her,  what  was  it  but  rank 
greed — not  in  the  least  for  her  person,  but  for  the  con 
nection  of  which  he  had  formed  so  preposterous  a 
view?  She  was  ready  now  to  say  to  herself  that  she 
had  swaggered  to  Bight  for  the  joke — odd  indeed 
though  the  wish  to  undeceive  him  at  the  moment  when 
he  would  have  been  more  welcome  than  ever  to  think 
what  he  liked.  The  only  thing  she  wished  him  not  to 
think,  as  she  believed,  was  that  she  thought  Mortimer 
Marshal  thought  her — or  anyone  on  earth  thought  her 
— intrinsically  charming.  She  didn't  want  to  put  to 

375 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

him  "  Do  you  suppose  I  suppose  that  if  it  came  to  the 
point ?  "  her  reasons  for  such  avoidance  being  eas 
ily  conceivable.  He  was  not  to  suppose  that,  in  any 
such  quarter,  she  struck  herself  as  either  casting  a  spell 
or  submitting  to  one ;  only,  while  their  crisis  lasted,  rec 
tifications  were  scarce  in  order.  She  couldn't  remind 
him  even,  without  a  mistake,  that  she  had  but  wished 
to  worry  him ;  because  in  the  first  place  that  suggested 
again  a  pretension  in  her  (so  at  variance  with  the 
image  in  the  mirror)  to  put  forth  arts — suggested 
possibly  even  that  she  used  similar  ones  when  she 
lunched,  in  bristling  flats,  with  the  pushing;  and  be 
cause  in  the  second  it  would  have  seemed  a  sort  of  chal 
lenge  to  him  to  renew  his  appeal. 

Then,  further  and  most  of  all,  she  had  a  doubt  which 
by  itself  would  have  made  her  wary,  as  it  distinctly,  in 
her  present  suspended  state,  made  her  uncomfortable; 
she  was  haunted  by  the  after-sense  of  having  perhaps 
been  fatuous.  A  spice  of  conviction,  in  respect  to 
what  was  open  to  her,  an  element  of  elation,  in  her  talk 
to  Bight  about  Marshal,  had  there  not,  after  all,  been  ? 
Hadn't  she  a  little  liked  to  think  the  wretched  man 
could  cling  to  her  ?  and  hadn't  she  also  a  little,  for  her 
self,  filled  out  the  future,  in  fancy,  with  the  picture  of 
the  droll  relation?  She  had  seen  it  as  droll,  evidently; 
but  had  she  seen  it  as  impossible,  unthinkable  ?  It  had 
become  unthinkable  now,  and  she  was  not  wholly  un 
conscious  of  how  the  change  had  worked.  Such  work 
ings  were  queer — but  there  they  were ;  the  foolish  man 
had  become  odious  to  her  precisely  because  she  was 
hardening  her  face  for  Bight.  The  latter  was  no  fool 
ish  man,  but  this  it  was  that  made  it  the  more  a  pity  he 
should  have  placed  the  impassable  between  them.  That 
was  what,  as  the  days  went  on,  she  felt  herself  take  in. 
It  was  there,  the  impassable — she  couldn't  lucidly  have 
said  why,  couldn't  have  explained  the  thing  on  the  real 
scale  of  the  wrong  her  comrade  had  done.  It  was  a 

376 


THE   PAPERS 

wrong,  it  was  a  wrong — she  couldn't  somehow  get  out 
of  that;  which  was  a  proof,  no  doubt,  that  she  con 
fusedly  tried.  The  author  of  Corisanda  was  sacrificed 
in  the  effort — for  ourselves  it  may  come  to  that.  Great 
to  poor  Maud  Blandy  as  well,  for  that  matter,  great, 
yet  also  attaching,  were  the  obscurity  and  ambiguity  in 
which  some  impulses  lived  and  moved — the  rich  gloom 
of  their  combinations,  contradictions,  inconsistencies, 
surprises.  It  rested  her  verily  a  little  from  her  straight- 
ness — the  line  of  a  character,  she  felt,  markedly  like  the 
line  of  the  Edgware  Road  and  of  Maida  Vale — that  she 
could  be  queerly  inconsistent,  and  inconsistent  in  the 
hustling  Strand,  where,  if  anywhere,  you  had,  under 
pain  of  hoofs  and  wheels,  to  decide  whether  or  no  you 
would  cross.  She  had  moments,  before  shop-windows, 
into  which  she  looked  without  seeing,  when  all  the  un- 
uttered  came  over  her.  She  had  once  told  her  friend 
that  she  pitied  everyone,  and  at  these  moments,  in  sharp 
unrest,  she  pitied  Bight  for  their  tension,  in  which 
nothing  was  relaxed. 

It  was  all  too  mixed  and  too  strange — each  of  them 
in  a  different  corner  with  a  different  impossibility. 
There  was  her  own,  in  far  Kilburnia;  and  there  was 
her  friend's,  everywhere — for  where  didn't  he  go  ?  and 
there  was  Mrs.  Chorner's,  on  the  very  edge  of  Park 
"  Line,"  in  spite  of  all  petticoats  and  marble  baths ; 
and  there  was  Beadel-Muffet's,  the  wretched  man,  God 
only  knew  where — which  was  what  made  the  whole 
show  supremely  incoherent :  he  ready  to  give  his  head, 
if,  as  seemed  so  unlikely,  he  still  had  a  head,  to  steal 
into  cover  and  keep  under,  out  of  the  glare ;  he  having 
scoured  Europe,  it  might  so  well  be  guessed,  for  some 
hole  in  which  the  Papers  wouldn't  find  him  out,  and 
then  having — what  else  was  there  by  this  time  to  pre 
sume  ? — died,  in  the  hole,  as  the  only  way  not  to  see,  to 
hear,  to  know,  let  alone  be  known,  heard,  seen.  Final 
ly,  while  he  lay  there  relieved  by  the  only  relief,  here 

377 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

was  poor  Mortimer  Marshal,  undeterred,  undismayed, 
unperceiving,  so  hungry  to  be  paragraphed  in  some 
thing  like  the  same  fashion  and  published  on  something 
like  the  same  scale,  that,  for  the  very  blindness  of  it, 
he  couldn't  read  the  lesson  that  was  in  the  air,  and 
scrambled,  to  his  utmost,  toward  the  boat  itself  that 
ferried  the  warning  ghost.  Just  that,  beyond  every 
thing,  was  the  incoherence  that  made  for  rather  dismal 
farce,  and  on  which  Bight  had  put  his  ringer  in  naming 
the  author  of  Corisanda  as  a  candidate,  in  turn,  for  the 
comic,  the  tragic  vacancy.  It  was  a  wonderful  mo 
ment  for  such  an  ideal,  and  the  sight  was  not  really  to 
pass  from  her  till  she  had  seen  the  whole  of  the  won 
der.  A  fortnight  had  elapsed  since  the  night  of  Bead- 
el's  disappearance,  and  the  conditions  attending  the  af 
ternoon  performances  of  the  Finnish  drama  had  in  some 
degree  reproduced  themselves — to  the  extent,  that  is, 
of  the  place,  the  time  and  several  of  the  actors  in 
volved;  the  audience,  for  reasons  traceable,  being  dif 
ferently  composed.  A  lady  of  "  high  social  position," 
desirous  still  further  to  elevate  that  character  by  the  ob 
vious  aid  of  the  theatre,  had  engaged  a  playhouse  for  a 
series  of  occasions  on  which  she  was  to  affront  in  per 
son  whatever  volume  of  attention  she  might  succeed 
in  collecting.  Her  success  had  not  immediately  been 
great,  and  by  the  third  or  the  fourth  day  the  public  con 
sciousness  was  so  markedly  astray  that  the  means  taken 
to  recover  it  penetrated,  in  the  shape  of  a  complimentary 
ticket,  even  to  our  young  woman.  Maud  had  com 
municated  with  Bight,  who  could  be  sure  of  a  ticket, 
proposing  to  him  that  they  should  go  together  and  of 
fering  to  await  him  in  the  porch  of  the  theatre.  He 
joined  her  there,  but  with  so  queer  a  face — for  her 
subtlety — that  she  paused  before  him,  previous  to  their 
going  in,  with  a  straight  "  You  know  something  !  " 

"About  that  rank  idiot?  "  He  shook  his  head,  look 
ing  kind  enough ;  but  it  didn't  make  him,  she  felt,  more 
natural.  "  My  dear,  it's  all  beyond  me." 

378 


THE   PAPERS 

"  I  mean/'  she  said  with  a  shade  of  uncertainty, 
"  about  poor  dear  Beadel." 

"  So  do  I.  So  does  everyone.  No  one  now,  at  any 
moment,  means  anything  about  anyone  else.  But  I've 
lost  intellectual  control — of  the  extraordinary  case.  I 
flattered  myself  I  still  had  a  certain  amount.  But  the 
situation  at  last  escapes  me.  I  break  down.  Non 
comprenny?  I  give  it  up." 

She  continued  to  look  at  him  hard.  "  Then  what's 
the  matter  with  you  ?  " 

"  Why,  just  that,  probably — that  I  feel  like  a  clever 
man  '  done,'  and  that  your  tone  with  me  adds  to  the 
feeling.  Or,  putting  it  otherwise,  it's  perhaps  only 
just  one  of  the  ways  in  which  I'm  so  interesting;  that, 
with  the  life  we  lead  and  the  age  we  live  in,  there's 
always  something  the  matter  with  me — there  can't  help 
being :  some  rage,  some  disgust,  some  fresh  amazement 
against  which  one  hasn't,  for  all  one's  experience,  been 
proof.  That  sense — of  having  been  sold  again — pro 
duces  emotions  that  may  well,  on  occasion,  be  reflected 
in  the  countenance.  There  you  are." 

Well,  he  might  say  that,  "  There  you  are,"  as  often 
as  he  liked  without,  at  the  pass  they  had  come  to,  mak 
ing  her  in  the  least  see  where  she  was.  She  was  only 
just  where  she  stood,  a  little  apart  in  the  lobby,  listen 
ing  to  his  words,  which  she  found  eminently  character 
istic  of  him,  struck  with  an  odd  impression  of  his  talk 
ing  against  time,  and,  most  of  all,  tormented  to  recog 
nise  that  she  could  fairly  do  nothing  better,  at  such  a 
moment,  than  feel  he  was  awfully  nice.  The  moment — 
that  of  his  most  blandly  (she  would  have  said  in  the 
case  of  another  most  impudently)  failing,  all  round,  to 
satisfy  her — was  appropriate  only  to  some  emotion 
consonant  with  her  dignity.  It  was  all  crowded  and 
covered,  hustled  and  interrupted  now ;  but  what  really 
happened  in  this  brief  passage,  and  with  her  finding  no 
words  to  reply  to  him,  was  that  dignity  quite  appeared 

379 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

to  collapse  and  drop  from  her,  to  sink  to  the  floor,  under 
the  feet  of  people  visibly  bristling  with  "  paper,"  where 
the  young  man's  extravagant  offer  of  an  arm,  to  put  an 
end  and  help  her  in,  had  the  effect  of  an  invitation  to 
leave  it  lying  to  be  trampled  on. 

Within,  once  seated,  they  kept  their  places  through 
two  intervals,  but  at  the  end  of  the  third  act — there 
were  to  be  no  less  than  five — they  fell  in  with  a  move 
ment  that  carried  half  the  audience  to  the  outer  air. 
Howard  Bight  desired  to  smoke,  and  Maud  offered  to 
accompany  him,  for  the  purpose,  to  the  portico,  where, 
somehow,  for  both  of  them,  the  sense  was  immediately 
strong  that  this,  the  squalid  Strand,  damp  yet  incandes 
cent,  ugly  yet  eloquent,  familiar  yet  fresh,  was  life, 
palpable,  ponderable,  possible,  much  more  than  the 
stuff,  neither  scenic  nor  cosmic,  they  had  quitted.  The 
difference  came  to  them,  from  the  street,  in  a  moist  mild 
blast,  which  they  simply  took  in,  at  first,  in  a  long 
draught,  as  more  amusing  than  their  play,  and  which, 
for  the  moment,  kept  them  conscious  of  the  voices  of 
the  air  as  of  something  mixed  and  vague.  The  next 
thing,  of  course,  however,  was  that  they  heard  the 
hoarse  newsmen,  though  with  the  special  sense  of  the 
sound  not  standing  out — which,  so  far  as  it  did  come, 
made  them  exchange  a  look.  There  was  no  hawker 
just  then  within  call. 

"What  are  they  crying?  " 

"  Blessed  if  I  care  !  "  Bight  said  while  he  got  his 
light — which  he  had  but  just  done  when  they  saw 
themselves  closely  approached.  The  Papers  had  come 
into  sight  in  the  form  of  a  small  boy  bawling  the 
"  Winner  "  of  something,  and  at  the  same  moment  they 
recognised  their  reprieve  they  recognised  also  the  pres 
ence  of  Mortimer  Marshal. 

He  had  no  shame  about  it.  "  I  fully  believed  I  should 
find  you." 

"  But  you  haven't  been,"  Bight  asked,  "  inside?  " 
380 


THE   PAPERS 

"  Not  at  to-day's  performance — I  only  just  thought 
I'd  pass.  But  at  each  of  the  others,"  Mortimer  Mar 
shal  confessed. 

"  Oh,  you're  a  devotee,"  said  Bight,  whose  reception 
of  the  poor  man  contended,  for  Maud's  attention,  with 
this  extravagance  of  the  poor  man's  own  importunity. 
Their  friend  had  sat  through  the  piece  three  times  on 
the  chance  of  her  being  there  for  one  or  other  of  the 
acts,  and  if  he  had  given  that  up  in  discouragement  he 
still  hovered  and  waited.  Who  now,  moreover,  was  to 
say  he  wasn't  rewarded?  To  find  her  companion  as 
well  as  at  last  to  find  herself  gave  the  reward  a  charac 
ter  that  it  took,  somehow,  for  her  eye,  the  whole  of 
this  misguided  person's  curiously  large  and  flat,  but 
distinctly  bland,  sweet,  solicitous  countenance  to  ex 
press.  It  came  over  the  girl  with  horror  that  here  was 
a  material  object — the  incandescence,  on  the  edge  of 
the  street,  didn't  spare  it — which  she  had  had  perverse 
moments  of  seeing  fixed  before  her  for  life.  She  asked 
herself,  in  this  agitation,  what  she  would  have  likened 
it  to;  more  than  anything  perhaps  to  a  large  clean 
china  plate,  with  a  neat  "  pattern,"  suspended,  to  the 
exposure  of  hapless  heads,  from  the  centre  of  the  do 
mestic  ceiling.  Truly  she  was,  as  by  the  education  of 
the  strain  undergone,  learning  something  every  hour 
— it  seemed  so  to  be  the  case  that  a  strain  enlarged  the 
mind,  formed  the  taste,  enriched,  even,  the  imagination. 
Yet  in  spite  of  this  last  fact,  it  must  be  added,  she  con 
tinued  rather  mystified  by  the  actual  pitch  of  her  com 
rade's  manner,  Bight  really  behaving  as  if  he  enjoyed 
their  visitor's  "  note."  He  treated  him  so  decently,  as 
they  said,  that  he  might  suddenly  have  taken  to  liking 
his  company;  which  was  an  odd  appearance  till  Maud 
understood  it — whereupon  it  became  for  her  a  slightly 
sinister  one.  For  the  effect  of  the  honest  gentleman, 
she  by  that  time  saw,  was  to  make  her  friend  nervous 
and  vicious,  and  the  form  taken  by  his  irritation  was 

381 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

just  this  dangerous  candour,  which  encouraged  the 
candour  of  the  victim.  She  had  for  the  latter  a  resid 
uum  of  pity,  whereas  Bight,  she  felt,  had  none,  and 
she  didn't  want  him,  the  poor  man,  absolutely  to  pay 
with  his  life. 

It  was  clear,  however,  within  a  few  minutes,  that 
this  was  what  he  was  bent  on  doing,  and  she  found  her 
self  helpless  before  his  smug  insistence.  She  had  taken 
his  measure;  he  was  made  incorrigibly  to  try,  irre 
deemably  to  fail — to  be,  in  short,  eternally  defeated  and 
eternally  unaware.  He  wouldn't  rage — he  couldn't, 
for  the  citadel  might,  in  that  case,  have  been  carried  by 
his  assault;  he  would  only  spend  his  life  in  walking 
round  and  round  it,  asking  everyone  he  met  how  in 
the  name  of  goodness  one  did  get  in.  And  everyone 
would  make  a  fool  of  him — though  no  one  so  much  as 
her  companion  now — and  everything  would  fall  from 
him  but  the  perfection  of  his  temper,  of  his  tailor,  of 
his  manners,  of  his  mediocrity.  He  evidently  rejoiced 
at  the  happy  chance  which  had  presented  him  again  to 
Bight,  and  he  lost  as  little  time  as  possible  in  proposing, 
the  play  ended,  an  adjournment  again  to  tea.  The 
spirit  of  malice  in  her  comrade,  now  inordinately  ex 
cited,  met  this  suggestion  with  an  amendment  that  fair 
ly  made  her  anxious;  Bight  threw  out,  in  a  word,  the 
idea  that  he  himself  surely,  this  time,  should  entertain 
Mr.  Marshal. 

"  Only  I'm  afraid  I  can  take  you  but  to  a  small  pot 
house  that  we  poor  journalists  haunt." 

"  They're  just  the  places  I  delight  in — it  would  be 
of  an  extraordinary  interest.  I  sometimes  venture 
into  them — feeling  awfully  strange  and  wondering,  I 
do  assure  you,  who  people  are.  But  to  go  there  with 

you / "  And  he  looked  from  Bight  to  Maud  and 

from  Maud  back  again  with  such  abysses  of  apprecia 
tion  that  she  knew  him  as  lost  indeed. 

382 


THE   PAPERS 


VII 

IT  was  demonic  of  Bight,  who  immediately  answered 
that  he  would  tell  him  with  pleasure  who  everyone  was, 
and  she  felt  this  the  more  when  her  friend,  making  light 
of  the  rest  of  the  entertainment  they  had  quitted,  ad 
vised  their  sacrificing  it  and  proceeding  to  the  other 
scene.  He  was  really  too  eager  for  his  victim — she 
wondered  what  he  wanted  to  do  with  him.  He  could 
only  play  him  at  the  most  a  practical  joke — invent  ap 
petising  identities,  once  they  were  at  table,  for  the  dull 
consumers  around.  No  one,  at  the  place  they  most 
frequented,  had  an  identity  in  the  least  appetising,  no 
one  was  anyone  or  anything.  It  was  apparently  of  the 
essence  of  existence  on  such  terms — the  terms,  at  any 
rate,  to  which  she  was  reduced — that  people  comprised 
in  it  couldn't  even  minister  to  each  other's  curiosity, 
let  alone  to  envy  or  awe.  She  would  have  wished 
therefore,  for  their  pursuer,  to  intervene  a  little,  to  warn 
him  against  beguilement ;  but  they  had  moved  together 
along  the  Strand  and  then  out  of  it,  up  a  near  cross 
street,  without  her  opening  her  mouth.  Bight,  as  she 
felt,  was  acting  to  prevent  this;  his  easy  talk  re 
doubled,  and  he  led  his  lamb  to  the  shambles.  The  talk 
had  jumped  to  poor  Beadel — her  friend  had  startled  her 
by  causing  it,  almost  with  violence,  at  a  given  moment, 
to  take  that  direction,  and  he  thus  quite  sufficiently 
stayed  her  speech.  The  people  she  lived  with  mightn't 
make  you  curious,  but  there  was  of  course  always  a 
sharp  exception  for  him.  She  kept  still,  in  fine,  with 
the  wonder  of  what  he  wanted;  though  indeed  she 
might,  in  the  presence  of  their  guest's  response,  have 
felt  he  was  already  getting  it.  He  was  getting,  that  is 
— and  she  was,  into  the  bargain — the  fullest  illustration 
of  the  ravage  of  a  passion ;  so  sublimely  Marshal  rose 
to  the  proposition,  infernally  thrown  off,  that,  in  what- 

383 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

ever  queer  box  or  tight  place  Beadel  might  have  found 
himself,  it  was  something,  after  all,  to  have  so  power 
fully  interested  the  public.  The  insidious  artless  way 
in  which  Bight  made  his  point ! — "  I  don't  know  that 
I've  ever  known  the  public  (and  I  watch  it,  as  in  my 
trade  we  have  to,  day  and  night)  so  consummately  in 
terested."  They  had  that  phenomenon — the  present 
consummate  interest — well  before  them  while  they  sat 
at  their  homely  meal,  served  with  accessories  so  differ 
ent  from  those  of  the  sweet  Chippendale  (another 
chord  on  which  the  young  man  played  with  just  the 
right  effect!)  and  it  would  have  been  hard  to  say  if  the 
guest  were,  for  the  first  moments,  more  under  the  spell 
of  the  marvellous  "  hold  "  on  the  town  achieved  by  the 
great  absentee,  or  of  that  of  the  delicious  coarse  table 
cloth,  the  extraordinary  form  of  the  saltcellars,  and  the 
fact  that  he  had  within  range  of  sight,  at  the  other  end 
of  the  room,  in  the  person  of  the  little  quiet  man  with 
blue  spectacles  and  an  obvious  wig,  the  greatest  author 
ity  in  London  about  the  inner  life  of  the  criminal 
classes.  Beadel,  none  the  less,  came  up  again  and 
stayed  up — would  clearly  so  have  been  kept  up,  had 
there  been  need,  by  their  host,  that  the  girl  couldn't  at 
last  fail  to  see  how  much  it  was  for  herself  that  his  in 
tention  worked.  What  was  it,  all  the  same — since  it 
couldn't  be  anything  so  simple  as  to  expose  their  hap 
less  visitor?  What  had  she  to  learn  about  him? — 
especially  at  the  hour  of  seeing  what  there  was  still  to 
learn  about  Bight.  She  ended  by  deciding — for  his 
appearance  bore  her  out — that  his  explosion  was  but 
the  form  taken  by  an  inward  fever.  The  fever,  on  this 
theory,  was  the  result  of  the  final  pang  of  responsibility. 
The  mystery  of  Beadel  had  grown  too  dark  to  be  borne 
— which  they  would  presently  feel;  and  he  was  mean 
while  in  the  phase  of  bluffing  it  off,  precisely  because  it 
was  to  overwhelm  him. 

"And  do  you  mean  you  too  would  pay  with  your 

384 


THE    PAPERS 

life? "  He  put  the  question,  agreeably,  across  the 
table  to  his  guest;  agreeably  of  course  in  spite  of  his 
eye's  dry  glitter. 

His  guest's  expression,  at  this,  fairly  became  beauti 
ful.  "Well,  it's  an  awfully  nice  point.  Certainly  one 
would  like  to  feel  the  great  murmur  surrounding  one's 
name,  to  be  there,  more  or  less,  so  as  not  to  lose  the 
sense  of  it,  and  as  I  really  think,  you  know,  the  pleas 
ure;  the  great  city,  the  great  empire,  the  world  itself 
for  the  moment,  hanging  literally  on  one's  personality 
and  giving  a  start,  in  its  suspense,  whenever  one  is  men 
tioned.  Big  sensation,  you  know,  that,"  Mr.  Marshal 
pleadingly  smiled,  "and  of  course  if  one  were  dead  one 
wouldn't  enjoy  it.  One  would  have  to  come  to  life  for 
that." 

"Naturally,"  Bight  rejoined — "only  that's  what 
the  dead  don't  do.  You  can't  eat  your  cake  and  have 
it.  The  question  is,"  he  goodnaturedly  explained, 
"whether  you'd  be  willing,  for  the  certitude  of  the 
great  murmur  you  speak  of,  to  part  with  your  life 
under  circumstances  of  extraordinary  mystery." 

His  guest  earnestly  fixed  it.  "Whether  /  would  be 
willing?" 

"Mr.  Marshall  wonders,"  Maud  said  to  Bight,  "if 
you  are,  as  a  person  interested  in  his  reputation,  defi 
nitely  proposing  to  him  some  such  possibility." 

He  looked  at  her,  on  this,  with  mild,  round  eyes, 
and  she  felt,  wonderfully,  that  he  didn't  quite  see  her 
as  joking.  He  smiled — he  always  smiled,  but  his 
anxiety  showed,  and  he  turned  it  again  to  their  com 
panion.  "You  mean — a — the  knowing  how  it  might 
be  going  to  be  felt?" 

"Well,  yes — call  it  that.  The  consciousness  of  what 
one's  unexplained  extinction — given,  to  start  with, 
one's  high  position — would  mean,  wouldn't  be  able  to 
help  meaning,  for  millions  and  millions  of  people.  The 
point  is — and  I  admit  it's,  as  you  call  it,  a  'nice'  one — 

385 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

if  you  can  think  of  the  impression  so  made  as  worth 
the  purchase.  Naturally,  naturally,  there's  but  the  im 
pression  you  make.  You  don't  receive  any.  You 
can't.  You've  only  your  confidence — so  far  as  that's 
an  impression.  Oh,  it  is  indeed  a  nice  point;  and  I 
only  put  it  to  you,"  Bight  wound  up,  "because,  you 
know,  you  do  like  to  be  recognised." 

Mr.  Marshal  was  bewildered,  but  he  was  not  so  be 
wildered  as  not  to  be  able,  a  trifle  coyly,  but  still  quite 
bravely,  to  confess  to  that.  Maud,  with  her  eyes  on  her 
friend,  found  herself  thinking  of  him  as  of  some  plump, 
innocent  animal,  more  or  less  of  the  pink-eyed  rabbit 
or  sleek  guinea-pig  order,  involved  in  the  slow  spell  of 
a  serpent  of  shining  scales.  Bight's  scales,  truly,  had 
never  so  shone  as  this  evening,  and  he  used  to  admira 
tion — which  was  just  a  part  of  the  lustre — the  right 
shade  of  gravity.  He  was  neither  so  light  as  to  fail 
of  the  air  of  an  attractive  offer,  nor  yet  so  earnest  as  to 
betray  a  jibe.  He  might  conceivably  have  been,  as  an 
undertaker  of  improvements  in  defective  notorieties, 
placing  before  his  guest  a  practical  scheme.  It  was 
really  quite  as  if  he  were  ready  to  guarantee  the  "  mur 
mur  "  if  Mr.  Marshal  was  ready  to  pay  the  price.  And 
the  price  wouldn't  of  course  be  only  Mr.  Marshal's  ex 
istence.  All  this,  at  least,  if  Mr.  Marshal  felt  moved 
to  take  it  so.  The  prodigious  thing,  next,  was  that 
Mr.  Marshal  was  so  moved — though,  clearly,  as  was  to 
be  expected,  with  important  qualifications.  "  Do  you 
really  mean,"  he  asked,  "  that  one  would  excite  this 
delightful  interest?  " 

"  You  allude  to  the  charged  state  of  the  air  on  the 
subject  of  Beadel?  "  Bight  considered,  looking  vol 
umes.  "  It  would  depend  a  good  deal  upon  who  one 
«." 

He  turned,  Mr.  Marshal,  again  to  Maud  Blandy, 
and  his  eyes  seemed  to  suggest  to  her  that  she  should 

386 


THE   PAPERS 

put  his  question  for  him.  They  forgave  her,  she 
judged,  for  having  so  oddly  forsaken  him,  but  they  ap 
pealed  to  her  now  not  to  leave  him  to  struggle  alone. 
Her  own  difficulty  was,  however,  meanwhile,  that  she 
feared  to  serve  him  as  he  suggested  without  too  much, 
by  way  of  return,  turning  his  case  to  the  comic; 
whereby  she  only  looked  at  him  hard  and  let  him  re 
vert  to  their  friend.  "  Oh,"  he  said,  with  a  rich  wistful- 
ness  from  which  the  comic  was  not  absent,  "  of  course 
everyone  can't  pretend  to  be  Beadel." 

"  Perfectly.  But  we're  speaking,  after  all,  of  those 
who  do  count." 

There  was  quite  a  hush,  for  the  minute,  while  the 
poor  man  faltered.  "  Should  you  say  that  / — in  any 
appreciable  way — count?  " 

Howard  Bight  distilled  honey.  "  Isn't  it  a  little  a 
question  of  how  much  we  should  find  you  did,  or,  for 
that  matter,  might,  as  it  were,  be  made  to,  in  the  event 
of  a  real  catastrophe?  " 

Mr.  Marshal  turned  pale,  yet  he  met  it  too  with 
sweetness.  "  I  like  the  way  " — and  he  had  a  glance  for 
Maud — "  you  talk  of  catastrophes !  " 

His  host  did  the  comment  justice.  "  Oh,  it's  only 
because,  you  see,  we're  so  peculiarly  in  the  presence 
of  one.  Beadel  shows  so  tremendously  what  a  catas 
trophe  does  for  the  right  person.  His  absence,  you 
may  say,  doubles,  quintuples,  his  presence." 

"  I  see,  I  see !  "  Mr.  Marshal  was  all  there.  "It's 
awfully  interesting  to  be  so  present.  And  yet  it's 
rather  dreadful  to  be  so  absent."  It  had  set  him  fairly 
musing;  for  couldn't  the  opposites  be  reconciled? 
"  If  he  w,"  he  threw  out,  "  absent !  " 

"  Why,  he's  absent,  of  course,"  said  Bight,  "  if  he's 
dead." 

"  And  really  dead  is  what  you  believe  him  to  be?  " 

He  breathed  it  with  a  strange  break,  as  from  a  mind 

387 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

too  full.  It  was  on  the  one  hand  a  grim  vision  for  his 
own  case,  but  was  on  the  other  a  kind  of  clearance  of 
the  field.  With  Beadel  out  of  the  way  his  own  case 
could  live,  and  he  was  obviously  thinking  what  it  might 
be  to  be  as  dead  as  that  and  yet  as  much  alive.  What 
his  demand  first  did,  at  any  rate,  was  to  make  Howard 
Bight  look  straight  at  Maud.  Her  own  look  met 
him,  but  she  asked  nothing  now.  She  felt  him  some 
how  fathomless,  and  his  practice  with  their  infatuated 
guest  created  a  new  suspense.  He  might  indeed  have 
been  looking  at  her  to  learn  how  to  reply,  but  even 
were  this  the  case  she  had  still  nothing  to  answer.  So 
in  a  moment  he  had  spoken  without  her.  "  I've  quite 
given  him  up." 

It  sank  into  Marshal,  after  which  it  produced  some 
thing.  "  He  ought  then  to  come  back.  I  mean,"  he 
explained,  "  to  see  for  himself — to  have  the  impres 
sion." 

"Of  the  noise  he  has  made?  Yes  "—Bight 
weighed  it — "  that  would  be  the  ideal." 

"  And  it  would,  if  one  must  call  it '  noise,'  "  Marshal 
limpidly  pursued,  "  make — a — more." 

"  Oh,  but  if  you  can't! " 

"  Can't,  you  mean,  through  having  already  made 
so  much,  add  to  the  quantity?  " 

"  Can't  " — Bight  was  a  wee  bit  sharp — "  come 
back,  confound  it,  at  all.  Can't  return  from  the  dead !  " 

Poor  Marshal  had  to  take  it.  "  No — not  if  you 
are  dead." 

"  Well,  that's  what  we're  talking  about." 

Maud,  at  this,  for  pity,  held  out  a  perch.  "  Mr. 
Marshal,  I  think,  is  talking  a  little  on  the  basis  of  the 
possibility  of  your  not  being !  "  He  threw  her  an  in 
stant  glance  of  gratitude,  and  it  gave  her  a  push.  "So 
long  as  you're  not  quite  too  utterly,  you  can  come 
back." 

"  Oh,"  said  Bight,  "  in  time  for  the  fuss?  " 
388 


THE   PAPERS 

"  Before  "—Marshal  met  it—"  the  interest  has  sub 
sided.  It  naturally  then  wouldn't — would  it? — sub 
side  !  " 

"  No,"  Bight  granted;  "  not  if  it  hadn't,  through 
wearing  out — I  mean  your  being  lost  too  long — al 
ready  died  out." 

"  Oh,  of  course,"  his  guest  agreed,  "  you  mustn't 
be  lost  too  long."  A  vista  had  plainly  opened  to  him, 
and  the  subject  led  him  on.  He  had,  before  its  extent, 
another  pause.  "About  how  long,  do  you  think ?  " 

Well,  Bight  had  to  think.  "  I  should  say  Beadel 
had  rather  overdone  it." 

The  poor  gentleman  stared.  "  But  if  he  can't  help 
himself ?  " 

Bight  gave  a  laugh.     "  Yes;  but  in  case  he  could." 

Maud  again  intervened,  and,  as  her  question  was  for 
their  host,  Marshal  was  all  attention.  "Do  you  con 
sider  Beadel  has  overdone  it?  " 

Well,  once  more,  it  took  consideration.  The  issue 
of  Bight's,  however,  was  not  of  the  clearest.  "  I  don't 
think  we  can  tell  unless  he  were  to.  I  don't  think  that, 
without  seeing  it,  and  judging  by  the  special  case,  one 
can  quite  know  how  it  would  be  taken.  He  might, 
on  the  one  side,  have  spoiled,  so  to  speak,  his  market; 
and  he  might,  on  the  other,  have  scored  as  never  be 
fore." 

"  It  might  be,"  Maud  threw  in,  "  just  the  making 
of  him." 

"  Surely  " — Marshal  glowed — "  there's  just  that 
chance." 

"  What  a  pity  then,"  Bight  laughed,  "  that  there 
isn't  some  one  to  take  it !  For  the  light  it  would  throw, 
I  mean,  on  the  laws — so  mysterious,  so  curious,  so  in 
teresting — that  govern  the  great  currents  of  public  at 
tention.  They're  not  wholly  whimsical — wayward  and 
wild;  they  have  their  strange  logic,  their  obscure  rea 
son — if  one  could  only  get  at  it !  The  man  who  does, 

389 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

you  see — and  who  can  keep  his  discovery  to  himself ! — 
will  make  his  everlasting  fortune,  as  well,  no  doubt,  as 
that  of  a  few  others.  It's  our  branch,  our  preoccupa 
tion,  in  fact,  Miss  Blandy's  and  mine — this  pursuit  of 
the  incalculable,  this  study,  to  that  end,  of  the  great 
forces  of  publicity.  Only,  of  course,  it  must  be  re 
membered,"  Bight  went  on,  "  that  in  the  case  we're 
speaking  of — the  man  disappearing  as  Beadel  has  now 
disappeared,  and  supplanting  for  the  time  every  other 
topic — must  have  someone  on  the  spot  for  him,  to 
keep  the  pot  boiling,  someone  acting,  with  real  intelli 
gence,  in  his  interest.  I  mean  if  he's  to  get  the  good 
of  it  when  he  does  turn  up.  It  would  never  do,  you 
see,  that  that  should  be  flat !" 

"  Oh  no,  not  Hat,  never !  "  Marshal  quailed  at  the 
thought.  Held  as  in  a  vise  by  his  host's  high  lucidity, 
he  exhaled  his  interest  at  every  pore.  "  It  wouldn't 
be  flat  for  Beadel,  would  it? — I  mean  if  he  were  to 
come." 

"  Not  much !  It  wouldn't  be  flat  for  Beadel — I 
think  I  can  undertake."  And  Bight  undertook  so  well 
that  he  threw  himself  back  in  his  chair  with  his  thumbs 
in  the  armholes  of  his  waistcoat  and  his  head  very  much 
up.  "The  only  thing  is  that  for  poor  Beadel  it's  a 
luxury,  so  to  speak,  wasted — and  so  dreadfully,  upon 
my  word,  that  one  quite  regrets  there's  no  one  to  step 


in." 


"  To  step  in?  "     His  visitor  hung  upon  his  lips. 

"  To  do  the  thing  better,  so  to  speak — to  do  it  right: 
to — having  raised  the  whirlwind — really  ride  the  storm. 
To  seize  the  psychological  hour." 

Marshal  met  it,  yet  he  wondered.  "  You  speak  of 
the  reappearance?  I  see.  But  the  man  of  the  reap 
pearance  would  have,  wouldn't  he? — or  perhaps  I  don't 
follow? — to  be  the  same  as  the  man  of  the  cfoyappear- 
ance.  It  wouldn't  do  as  well — would  it? — for  some 
body  else  to  turn  up?  " 

390 


THE   PAPERS 

Bight  considered  him  with  attention — as  if  there 
were  fine  possibilities.  "  No;  unless  such  a  person 
should  turn  up,  say — well,  with  news  of  him." 

"  But  what  news?" 

"  With  lights — the  more  lurid  the  better — on  the 
darkness.  With  the  facts,  don't  you  see,  of  the  disap 
pearance." 

Marshal,  on  his  side,  threw  himself  back.  "  But 
he'd  have  to  know  them !  " 

"  Oh,"  said  Bight,  with  prompt  portentousness, 
"  that  could  be  managed." 

It  was  too  much,  by  this  time,  for  his  victim,  who 
simply  turned  on  Maud  a  dilated  eye  and  a  flushed 
cheek.  "  Mr.  Marshal,"  it  made  her  say — "  Mr.  Mar 
shal  would  like  to  turn  up." 

Her  hand  was  on  the  table,  and  the  effect  of  her 
words,  combined  with  this,  was  to  cause  him,  before  re 
sponsive  speech  could  come,  to  cover  it  respectfully 
but  expressively  with  his  own.  "  Do  you  mean,"  he 
panted  to  Bight,  "  that  you  have,  amid  the  general  col 
lapse  of  speculation,  facts  to  give?  " 

"  I've  always  facts  to  give." 

It  begot  in  the  poor  man  a  large  hot  smile.  "  But 
— how  shall  I  say? — authentic,  or  as  I  believe  you 
clever  people  say,  '  inspired  '  ones?  " 

"If  I  should  undertake  such  a  case  as  we're  sup 
posing,  I  would  of  course  by  that  circumstance  under 
take  that  my  facts  should  be — well,  worthy  of  it.  I 
would  take,"  Bight  on  his  own  part  modestly  smiled, 
"  pains  with  them." 

It  finished  the  business.  "Would  you  take  pains  for 
me?  " 

Bight  looked  at  him  now  hard.  "  Would  you  like 
to  appear? " 

"  Oh,  '  appear  ' !  "  Marshal  weakly  murmured. 

"  Is  it,  Mr.  Marshal,  a  real  proposal?  I  mean  are 
you  prepared ?  " 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

Wonderment  sat  in  his  eyes — an  anguish  of  doubt 
and  desire.  "  But  wouldn't  you  prepare  me ?  " 

"  Would  you  prepare  me — that's  the  point,"  Bight 
laughed — "  to  prepare  you?  " 

There  was  a  minute's  mutual  gaze,  but  Marshal  took 

it  in.     "  I  don't  know  what  you're  making  me  say;  I 

1  don't  know  what  you're  making  me  feel.     When  one  is 

with  people  so  up  in  these  things "  and  he  turned 

to  his  companions,  alternately,  a  look  as  of  conscious 
doom  lighted  with  suspicion,  a  look  that  was  like  a  cry 
for  mercy — "  one  feels  a  little  as  if  one  ought  to  be 
saved  from  one's  self.  For  I  dare  say  one's  foolish 
enough  with  one's  poor  little  wish " 

"  The  little  wish,  my  dear  sir  " — Bight  took  him 
up — "  to  stand  out  in  the  world !  Your  wish  is  the 
wish  of  all  high  spirits." 

"  It's  dear  of  you  to  say  it."  Mr.  Marshal  was  all  re 
sponse.  "  I  shouldn't  want,  even  if  it  were  weak  or 
vain,  to  have  lived  wholly  unknown.  And  if  what  you 
ask  is  whether  I  understand  you  to  speak,  as  it  were, 
professionally " 

'  You  do  understand  me?  "  Bight  pushed  back  his 
chair. 

"  Oh,  but  so  well ! — when  I've  already  seen  what 
you  can  do.  I  need  scarcely  say,  that  having  seen  it, 
I  sha'n't  bargain." 

"Ah,  then,  /  shall,"  Bight  smiled.  "  I  mean  with 
the  Papers.  It  must  be  half  profits." 

"  '  Profits  '?  "     His  guest  was  vague. 

"  Our  friend,"  Maud  explained  to  Bight,  "  simply 
wants  the  position." 

Bight  threw  her  a  look.  "  Ah,  he  must  take  what  I 
give  him." 

"But  what  you  give  me,"  their  friend  handsomely 
contended,  "is  the  position." 

"  Yes;  but  the  terms  that  I  shall  get!  I  don't  pro 
duce  you,  of  course,"  Bight  went  on,  "  till  I've  pre- 

392 


THE  PAPERS 

pared  you.  But  when  I  do  produce  you  it  will  be  as  a 
value/' 

"  You'll  get  so  much  for  me?  "  the  poor  gentleman 
quavered. 

"  I  shall  be  able  to  get,  I  think,  anything  I  ask.  So 
we  divide."  And  Bight  jumped  up. 

Marshal  did  the  same,  and,  while,  with  his  hands  on 
the  back  of  his  chair,  he  steadied  himself  from  the  ver 
tiginous  view,  they  faced  each  other  across  the  table. 
"  Oh,  it's  too  wonderful !  " 

"You're  not  afraid?" 

He  looked  at  a  card  on  the  wall,  framed,  suspended 
and  marked  with  the  word  "  Soups."  He  looked  at 
Maud,  who  had  not  moved.  "  I  don't  know;  I  may 
be;  I  must  feel.  What  I  should  fear,"  he  added,  "  would 
be  his  coming  back." 

"Beadel's?  Yes,  that  would  dish  you.  But  since 
he  can't !" 

"  I  place  myself,"  said  Mortimer  Marshal,  "  in  your 
hands." 

Maud  Blandy  still  hadn't  moved;  she  stared  before 
her  at  the  cloth.  A  small  sharp  sound,  unheard,  she 
saw,  by  the  others,  had  reached  her  from  the  street, 
and  with  her  mind  instinctively  catching  at  it,  she 
waited,  dissimulating  a  little,  for  its  repetition  or  its 
effect.  It  was  the  howl  of  the  Strand,  it  was  news  of 
the  absent,  and  it  would  have  a  bearing.  She  had  a 
hesitation,  for  she  winced  even  now  with  the  sense  of 
Marshal's  intensest  look  at  her.  He  couldn't  be  saved 
from  himself,  but  he  might  be,  still,  from  Bight; 
though  it  hung  of  course,  her  chance  to  warn  him,  on 
what  the  news  would  be.  She  thought  with  con 
centration,  while  her  friends  unhooked  their  overcoats, 
and  by  the  time  these  garments  were  donned  she  was 
on  her  feet.  Then  she  spoke.  "  I  don't  want  you  to 
be  '  dished.' ' 

He  allowed  for  her  alarm.     "  But  how  can  I  be?  " 

393 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Something  has  come." 

"  Something ?  "     The  men  had  both  spoken. 

They  had  stopped  where  they  stood;  she  again 
caught  the  sound.  "  Listen !  They're  crying." 

They  waited  then,  and  it  came — came,  of  a  sudden, 
with  a  burst  and  as  if  passing  the  place.  A  hawker, 
outside,  with  his  "  extra,"  called  by  some  one  and 
hurrying,  bawled  it  as  he  moved.  "  Death  of  Beadel- 
Muffet — Extraordinary  News !  " 

They  all  gasped,  and  Maud,  with  her  eyes  on  Bight, 
saw  him,  to  her  satisfaction  at  first,  turn  pale.  But  his 
guest  drank  it  in.  "  If  it's  true  then  " — Marshal  tri 
umphed  at  her — "I'm  not  dished." 

But  she  only  looked  hard  at  Bight,  who  struck  her 
as  having,  at  the  sound,  fallen  to  pieces,  and  as  having 
above  all,  on  the  instant,  turned  cold  for  his  worried 
game.  "  Is  it  true?  "  she  austerely  asked. 

His  white  face  answrered.     "  It's  true." 

VIII 

THE  first  thing,  on  the  part  of  our  friends — after  each 
interlocutor,  producing  a  penny,  had  plunged  into 
the  unfolded  "  Latest  " — was  this  very  evidence  of 
their  dispensing  with  their  companion's  further  attend 
ance  on  their  agitated  state,  and  all  the  more  that  Bight 
was  to  have  still,  in  spite  of  agitation,  his  function  with 
him  to  accomplish:  a  result  much  assisted  by  the  in 
sufflation  of  wind  into  Mr.  Marshal's  sails  constituted 
by  the  fact  before  them.  With  Beadel  publicly  dead 
this  gentleman's  opportunity,  on  the  terms  just  ar 
ranged,  opened  out;  it  was  quite  as  if  they  had  seen 
him,  then  and  there,  step,  with  a  kind  of  spiritual 
splash,  into  the  empty  seat  of  the  boat  so  launched, 
scarcely  even  taking  time  to  master  the  essentials  be 
fore  he  gave  himself  to  the  breeze.  The  essentials  in 
deed  he  was,  by  their  understanding,  to  receive  in  full 

394 


THE   PAPERS 

from  Bight  at  their  earliest  leisure;  but  nothing  could 
so  vividly  have  marked  his  confidence  in  the  young 
man  as  the  promptness  with  which  he  appeared  now 
ready  to  leave  him  to  his  inspiration.  The  news,  more 
over,  as  yet,  was  the  rich,  grim  fact — a  sharp  flare  from 
an  Agency,  lighting  into  blood-colour  the  locked 
room,  finally,  with  the  police  present,  forced  open,  of 
the  first  hotel  at  Frankfort-on-the-Oder;  but  there  was 
enough  of  it,  clearly,  to  bear  scrutiny,  the  scrutiny 
represented  in  our  young  couple  by  the  act  of  perusal 
prolonged,  intensified,  repeated,  so  repeated  that  it  was 
exactly  perhaps  with  this  suggestion  of  doubt  that 
poor  Mr.  Marshal  had  even  also  a  little  lost  patience. 
He  vanished,  at  any  rate,  while  his  supporters,  still 
planted  in  the  side-street  into  which  they  had  lately 
issued,  stood  extinguished,  as  to  any  facial  com 
munion,  behind  the  array  of  printed  columns.  It  was 
only  after  he  had  gone  that,  whether  aware  or  not,  the 
others  lowered,  on  either  side,  the  absorbing  page  and 
knew  that  their  eyes  had  met.  A  remarkable  thing, 
for  Maud  Blandy,  then  happened,  a  thing  quite  as  re 
markable  at  least  as  poor  Beadel's  suicide,  which  we  re 
call  her  having  so  considerably  discounted. 

Present  as  they  thus  were  at  the  tragedy,  present  in 
far  Frankfort  just  where  they  stood,  by  the  door  of 
their  stale  pothouse  and  in  the  thick  of  London  air, 
the  logic  of  her  situation,  she  was  sharply  conscious, 
would  have  been  an  immediate  rupture  with  Bight. 
He  was  scared  at  what  he  had  done — he  looked  his 
scare  so  straight  out  at  her  that  she  might  almost  have 
seen  in  it  the  dismay  of  his  question  of  how  far  his  re 
sponsibility,  given  the  facts,  might,  if  pried  into,  be 
held — and  not  only  at  the  judgment-seat  of  mere  mor 
als — to  reach.  The  dismay  was  to  that  degree  il 
luminating  that  she  had  had  from  him  no  such  avowal 
of  responsibility  as  this  amounted  to,  and  the  limit  to 
any  laxity  on  her  own  side  had  therefore  not  been  set 

395 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

for  her  with  any  such  sharpness.  It  put  her  at  last  in 
the  right,  his  scare — quite  richly  in  the  right;  and  as 
that  was  naturally  but  where  she  had  waited  to  find 
herself  everything  that  now  silently  passed  between 
them  had  the  merit,  if  it  had  none  other,  of  simplifying. 
Their  hour  had  struck,  the  hour  after  which  she  was 
definitely  not  to  have  forgiven  him.  Yet  what  oc 
curred,  as  I  say,  was  that,  if,  at  the  end  of  five  minutes, 
she  had  moved  much  further,  it  proved  to  be,  in  spite 
of  logic,  not  in  the  sense  away  from  him,  but  in  the 
sense  nearer.  He  showed  to  her,  at  these  strange  mo 
ments,  as  blood-stained  and  literally  hunted;  the  yell 
of  the  hawkers,  repeated  and  echoing  round  them,  was 
like  a  cry  for  his  life;  and  there  was  in  particular  a 
minute  during  which,  gazing  down  into  the  roused 
Strand,  all  equipped  both  with  mob  and  with  con 
stables,  she  asked  herself  whether  she  had  best  get  off 
with  him  through  the  crowd,  where  they  would  be  least 
noticed,  or  get  him  away  through  quiet  Covent  Gar 
den,  empty  at  that  hour,  but  with  policemen  to  watch 
a  furtive  couple,  and  with  the  news,  more  bawled  at 
their  heels  in  the  stillness,  acquiring  the  sound  of  the 
very  voice  of  justice.  It  was  this  last  sudden  terror 
that  presently  determined  her,  and  determined  with 
it  an  impulse  of  protection  that  had  somehow  to  do 
with  pity  without  having  to  do  with  tenderness.  It 
settled,  at  all  events,  the  question  of  leaving  him;  she 
couldn't  leave  him  there  and  so;  she  must  see  at  least 
what  would  have  come  of  his  own  sense  of  the  shock. 

The  way  he  took  it,  the  shock,  gave  her  afresh  the 
measure  of  how  perversely  he  had  played  with  Marshal 
— of  how  he  had  tried  so,  on  the  very  edge  of  his  pre 
dicament,  to  cheat  his  fears  and  beguile  his  want  of 
ease.  He  had  insisted  to  his  victim  on  the  truth  he 
had  now  to  reckon  with,  but  had  insisted  only  because 
he  didn't  believe  it.  Beadel,  by  that  attitude,  was  but 
lying  low;  so  that  he  would  have  no  promise  really  tq 

396 


THE   PAPERS 

redeem.  At  present  he  had  one,  indeed,  and  Maud 
could  ask  herself  if  the  redemption  of  it,  with  the  lead 
ing  of  their  wretched  friend  a  further  fantastic  dance, 
would  be  what  he  depended  on  to  drug  the  pain  of  re 
morse.  By  the  time  she  had  covered  as  much  ground 
as  this,  however,  she  had  also,  standing  before  him, 
taken  his  special  out  of  his  hand  and,  folding  it  up 
carefully  with  her  own  and  smoothing  it  down,  packed 
the  two  together  into  such  a  small  tight  ball  as  she 
might  toss  to  a  distance  without  the  air,  which  she 
dreaded,  of  having,  by  any  looser  proceeding,  dis 
owned  or  evaded  the  news.  Howard  Bight,  help-less 
and  passive,  putting  on  the  matter  no  governed  face, 
let  her  do  with  him  as  she  liked,  let  her,  for  the  first 
time  in  their  acquaintance,  draw  his  hand  into  her  arm 
as  if  he  were  an  invalid  or  as  if  she  were  a  snare.  She 
took  with  him,  thus  guided  and  sustained,  their  second 
plunge;  led  him,  with  decision,  straight  to  where  their 
shock  was  shared  and  amplified,  pushed  her  way, 
guarding  him,  across  the  dense  thoroughfare  and 
through  the  great  westward  current  which  fairly 
seemed  to  meet  and  challenge  them,  and  then,  by 
reaching  Waterloo  Bridge  with  him  and  descending 
the  granite  steps,  set  him  down  at  last  on  the  Embank 
ment.  It  was  a  fact,  none  the  less,  that  she  had  in  her 
eyes,  all  the  while,  and  too  strangely  for  speech,  the 
vision  of  the  scene  in  the  little  German  city:  the 
smashed  door,  the  exposed  horror,  the  wondering,  in 
sensible  group,  the  English  gentleman,  in  the  dis 
ordered  room,  driven  to  bay  among  the  scattered  per 
sonal  objects  that  only  too  floridly  announced  and  em 
blazoned  him,  and  several  of  which  the  Papers  were  al 
ready  naming — the  poor  English  gentleman,  hunted 
and  hiding,  done  to  death  by  the  thing  he  yet,  for  so 
long,  always  would  have,  and  stretched  on  the  floor 
with  his  beautiful  little  revolver  still  in  his  hand  and 
the  effusion  of  his  blood,  from  a  wound  taken,  with 

397 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

rare  resolution,   full  in  the  face,   extraordinary  and 
dreadful. 

She  went  on  with  her  friend,  eastward  and  beside  the 
river,  and  it  was  as  if  they  both,  for  that  matter,  had,  in 
their  silence,  the  dire  material  vision.  Maud  Blandy, 
however,  presently  stopped  short — one  of  the  connec 
tions  of  the  picture  so  brought  her  to  a  stand.  It 
had  come  over  her,  with  a  force  she  couldn't  check, 
that  the  catastrophe  itself  would  have  been,  with  all 
the  unfathomed  that  yet  clung  to  it,  just  the  thing  for 
her  companion's  professional  hand;  so  that,  queerly  but 
absolutely,  while  she  looked  at  him  again  in  reproba 
tion  and  pity,  it  was  as  much  as  she  could  do  not  to  feel 
it  for  him  as  something  missed,  not  to  wish  he  might 
have  been  there  to  snatch  his  chance,  and  not,  above 
all,  to  betray  to  him  this  reflection.  It  had  really  risen 
to  her  lips — "Why  aren't  you,  old  man,  on  the  spot?  " 
and  indeed  the  question,  had  it  broken  forth,  might 
well  have  sounded  as  a  provocation  to  him  to  start 
without  delay.  Such  was  the  effect,  in  poor  Maud, 
for  the  moment,  of  the  habit,  so  confirmed  in  her,  of 
seeing  time  marked  only  by  the  dial  of  the  Papers. 
She  had  admired  in  Bight  the  true  journalist  that  she 
herself  was  so  clearly  not — though  it  was  also  not  what 
she  had  most  admired  in  him;  and  she  might  have  felt, 
at  this  instant,  the  charm  of  putting  true  journalism  to 
the  proof.  She  might  have  been  on  the  point  of  say 
ing  :  "  Real  business,  you  know,  would  be  for  you  to 
start  now,  just  as  you  are,  before  anyone  else,  sure  as 
you  can  so  easily  be  of  having  the  pull";  and  she 
might,  after  a  moment,  while  they  paused,  have  been 
looking  back,  through  the  river-mist,  for  a  sign  of  the 
hour,  at  the  blurred  face  of  Big  Ben.  That  she  grazed 
this  danger  yet  avoided  it  was  partly  the  result  in  truth 
of  her  seeing  for  herself  quickly  enough  that  the  last 
thing  Bight  could  just  then  have  thought  of,  even  un 
der  provocation  of  the  most  positive  order,  was  the 

398 


THE   PAPERS 

chance  thus  failing  him,  or  the  train,  the  boat,  the  ad 
vantage,  that  the  true  journalist  wouldn't  have  missed. 
He  quite,  under  her  eyes,  while  they  stood  together, 
ceased  to  be  the  true  journalist;  she  saw  him,  as  she 
felt,  put  off  the  character  as  definitely  as  she  might 
have  seen  him  remove  his  coat,  his  hat,  or  the  con 
tents  of  his  pockets,  in  order  to  lay  them  on  the  para 
pet  before  jumping  into  the  river.  Wonderful  was 
the  difference  that  this  transformation,  marked  by  no 
word  and  supported  by  no  sign,  made  in  the  man  she 
had  hitherto  known.  Nothing,  again,  could  have  so 
expressed  for  her  his  continued  inward  dismay.  It 
was  as  if,  for  that  matter,  she  couldn't  have  asked  him 
a  question  without  adding  to  it;  and  she  didn't  wish  to 
add  to  it,  since  she  was  by  this  time  more  fully  aware 
that  she  wished  to  be  generous.  When  she  at  last 
uttered  other  words  it  was  precisely  so  that  she 
mightn't  press  him. 

"  I  think  of  her — poor  thing :  that's  what  it  makes 
me  do.  I  think  of  her  there  at  this  moment — just  out 
of  the  '  Line  ' — with  this  stuff  shrieked  at  her  win 
dows."  With  which,  having  so  at  once  contained  and 
relieved  herself,  she  caused  him  to  walk  on. 

"  Are  you  talking  of  Mrs.  Chorner?  "  he  after  a 
moment  asked.  And  then,  when  he  had  had  her  quick 
"  Of  course — of  who  else?  "  he  said  what  she  didn't 
expect.  "  Naturally  one  thinks  of  her.  But  she  has 

herself  to  blame.  I  mean  she  drove  him "  What 

he  meant,  however,  Bight  suddenly  dropped,  taken  as 
he  was  with  another  idea,  which  had  brought  them  the 
next  minute  to  a  halt.  "  Mightn't  you,  by  the  way, 
see  her?" 

"See  her  now ?" 

"  '  Now  '  or  never — for  the  good  of  it.  Now's  just 
your  time." 

"  But  how  can  it  be  hers,  in  the  very  midst ?  " 

"  Because  it's  in  the  very  midst.       She'll  tell  you 

399 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

things  to-night  that  she'll  never  tell  again.     To-night 
she'll  be  great." 

Maud  gaped  almost  wildly.  "  You  want  me,  at 
such  an  hour,  to  call ?  " 

"  And  send  up  your  card  with  the  word — oh,  of 
course  the  right  one ! — on  it." 

"  What  do  you  suggest,"  Maud  asked,  "  as  the  right 
one?" 

"  Well,  '  The  world  wants  you  ' — that  usually  does. 
I've  seldom  known  it,  even  in  deeper  distress  than  is, 
after  all,  here  supposable,  to  fail.  Try  it,  at  any  rate." 

The  girl,  strangely  touched,  intensely  wondered. 
"  Demand  of  her,  you  mean,  to  let  me  explain  for 
her?  " 

"There  you  are.  You  catch  on.  Write  that — if  you 
like — '  Let  me  explain.'  She'll  want  to  explain." 

Maud  wondered  at  him  more — he  had  somehow  so 
turned  the  tables  on  her.  "  But  she  doesn't.  It's  ex 
actly  what  she  doesn't;  she  never  has.  And  that  he, 
poor  wretch,  was  always  wanting  to " 

"  Was  precisely  what  made  her  hold  off?  I  grant 
it."  He  had  waked  up.  "  But  that  was  before  she 
had  killed  him.  Trust  me,  she'll  chatter  now." 

This,  for  his  companion,  simply  forced  it  out.  "  It 
wasn't  she  who  killed  him.  That,  my  dear,  you 
know." 

"  You  mean  it  was  I  who  did?  Well  then,  my  child, 
interview  m-e"  And,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets  and 
his  idea  apparently  genuine,  he  smiled  at  her,  by  the 
grey  river  and  under  the  high  lamps,  with  an  effect 
strange  and  suggestive.  "  Thai  would  be  a  go !  " 

"  You  mean  " — she  jumped  at  it — "  you'll  tell  me 
what  you  know?  " 

"  Yes,  and  even  what  I've  done !  But — if  you'll 
take  it  so — for  the  Papers.  Oh,  for  the  Papers  only !  " 

She  stared.     "  You  mean  you  want  me  to  get  it 

in ?  " 

400 


THE   PAPERS 

"  I  don't  '  want '  you  to  do  anything,  but  I'm  ready 
to  help  you,  ready  to  get  it  in  for  you,  like  a  shot,  my 
self,  if  it's  a  thing  you  yourself  want." 

"  A  thing  I  want — to  give  you  away?  " 

"  Oh,"  he  laughed,  "  I'm  just  now  worth  giving ! 
You'd  really  do  it,  you  know.  And,  to  help  you,  here 
I  am.  It  would  be  for  you — only  judge ! — a  leg  up." 

It  would  indeed,  she  really  saw;  somehow,  on  the 
spot,  she  believed  it.  But  his  surrender  made  her 
tremble.  It  wasn't  a  joke — she  could  give  him  away; 
or  rather  she  could  sell  him  for  money.  Money,  thus, 
was  what  he  offered  her,  or  the  value  of  money,  which 
was  the  same;  it  was  what  he  wanted  her  to  have.  She 
was  conscious  already,  however,  that  she  could  have  it 
only  as  he  offered  it,  and  she  said  therefore,  but  half 
heartedly,  "  I'll  keep  your  secret." 

He  looked  at  her  more  gravely.  "Ah,  as  a  secret  I 
can't  give  it."  Then  he  hesitated.  "I'll  get  you  a 
hundred  pounds  for  it." 

"  Why  don't  you,"  she  asked,  "  get  them  for  your 
self?  " 

"  Because  I  don't  care  for  myself.  I  care  only  for 
you." 

She  waited  again.  "  You  mean  for  my  taking  you?  " 
And  then  as  he  but  looked  at  her :  "  How  should  I 
take  you  if  I  had  dealt  with  you  that  way?  " 

"  What  do  I  lose  by  it,"  he  said,  "  if,  by  our  under 
standing  of  the  other  day,  since  things  have  so  turned 
out,  you're  not  to  take  me  at  all?  So,  at  least,  on  my 
proposal,  you  get  something  else." 

"And  what,"  Maud  returned,  "  do  you  get?  " 

"I  don't  'get';  I  lose.  I  have  lost.  So  I  don't 
matter."  The  eyes  with  which  she  covered  him  at 
this  might  have  signified  either  that  he  didn't  satisfy 
her  or  that  his  last  word — as  his  word — rather  imposed 
itself.  Whether  or  no,  at  all  events,  she  decided  that 
he  still  did  matter.  She  presently  moved  again,  and 

401 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

they  walked  some  minutes  more.  He  had  made  her 
tremble,  and  she  continued  to  tremble.  So  unlike 
anything  that  had  ever  come  to  her  was,  if  seriously 
viewed,  his  proposal.  The  quality  of  it,  while  she 
walked,  grew  intenser  with  each  step.  It  struck  her 
as,  when  one  came  to  look  at  it,  unlike  any  offer  any 
man  could  ever  have  made  or  any  woman  ever  have  re 
ceived;  and  it  began  accordingly,  on  the  instant,  to 
affect  her  as  almost  inconceivably  romantic,  absolutely, 
in  a  manner,  and  quite  out  of  the  blue,  dramatic;  im 
measurably  more  so,  for  example,  than  the  sort  of 
thing  she  had  come  out  to  hear  in  the  afternoon — the 
sort  of  thing  that  was  already  so  far  away.  If  he  was 
joking  it  was  poor,  but  if  he  was  serious  it  was, 
properly,  sublime.  And  he  wasn't  joking.  He  was, 
however,  after  an  interval,  talking  again,  though, 
trembling  still,  she  had  not  been  attentive;  so  that  she 
was  unconscious  of  what  he  had  said  until  she  heard 
him  once  more  sound  Mrs.  Chorner's  name.  "  If  you 
don't,  you  know,  someone  else  will,  and  someone  much 
worse.  You  told  me  she  likes  you."  She  had  at  first 
no  answer  for  him,  but  it  presently  made  her  stop 
again.  It  was  beautiful,  if  she  would,  but  it  was  odd — 
this  pressure  for  her  to  push  at  the  very  hour  he  him 
self  had  renounced  pushing.  A  part  of  the  whole  sub 
limity  of  his  attitude,  so  far  as  she  was  concerned,  it 
clearly  was;  since,  obviously,  he  was  not  now  to  profit 
by  anything  she  might  do.  She  seemed  to  see  that,  as 
the  last  service  he  could  render,  he  wished  to  launch 
her  and  leave  her.  And  that  came  out  the  more  as  he 
kept  it  up.  "  If  she  likes  you,  you  know,  she  really 
wants  you.  Go  to  her  as  a  friend." 

"And  bruit  her  abroad  as  one?"  Maud  Blandy 
asked. 

"  Oh,  as  a  friend  from  the  Papers — from  them  and 
for  them,  and  with  just  your  half-hour  to  give  her  be 
fore  you  rush  back  to  them.  Take  it  even — oh,  you 

402 


THE   PAPERS 

can  safely  " — the  young  man  developed — "  a  little 
high  with  her.  That's  the  way — the  real  way."  And 
he  spoke  the  next  moment  as  if  almost  losing  his  pa 
tience.  '  You  ought  by  this  time,  you  know,  to  un 
derstand." 

There  was  something  in  her  mind  that  it  still 
charmed — his  mastery  of  the  horrid  art.  He  could 
see,  always,  the  superior  way,  and  it  was  as  if,  in  spite 
of  herself,  she  were  getting  the  truth  from  him.  Only 
she  didn't  want  the  truth — at  least  not  that  one.  "And 
if  she  simply,  for  my  impudence,  chucks  me  out  of 
window?  A  short  way  is  easy  for  them,  you  know, 
when  one  doesn't  scream  or  kick,  or  hang  on  to  the 
furniture  or  the  banisters.  And  I  usually,  you  see  " 
— she  said  it  pensively — "  don't.  I've  always,  from 
the  first,  had  my  retreat  prepared  for  any  occasion,  and 
flattered  myself  that,  whatever  hand  I  might,  or 
mightn't,  become  at  getting  in,  no  one  would  ever  be 
able  so  beautifully  to  get  out.  Like  a  flash,  simply. 
And  if  she  does,  as  I  say,  chuck  me,  it's  you  who  fall  to 
the  ground." 

He  listened  to  her  without  expression,  only  saying 
"  If  you  feel  for  her,  as  you  insist,  it's  your  duty."  And 
then  later,  as  if  he  had  made  an  impression,  "  Your 
duty,  I  mean,  to  try.  I  admit^if  you  will,  that  there's 
a  risk,  though  I  don't,  with  my  experience,  feel  it. 
Nothing  venture,  at  any  rate,  nothing  have;  and  it's 
all,  isn't  it?  at  the  worst,  in  the  day's  work.  There's 
but  one  thing  you  can  go  on,  but  it's  enough.  The 
greatest  probability." 

She  resisted,  but  she  was  taking  it  in.  "  The  proba 
bility  that  she  will  throw  herself  on  my  neck?  " 

"  It  will  be  either  one  thing  or  the  other,"  he  went 
on  as  if  he  had  not  heard  her.  "  She'll  not  receive  her, 
or  she  will.  But  if  she  does  your  fortune's  made,  and 
you'll  be  able  to  look  higher  than  the  mere  common 
form  of  donkey."  She  recognised  the  reference  to 

403 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

Marshal,  but  that  was  a  thing  she  needn't  mind  now, 
and  he  had  already  continued.  "  She'll  keep  nothing 
back.  And  you  mustn't  either." 

"  Oh,  won't  I?  "  Maud  murmured. 

"  Then  you'll  break  faith  with  her." 

And,  as  if  to  emphasise  it,  he  went  on,  though  with 
out  leaving  her  an  infinite  time  to  decide,  for  he  looked 
at  his  watch  as  they  proceeded,  and  when  they  came,  in 
their  spacious  walk,  abreast  of  another  issue,  where 
the  breadth  of  the  avenue,  the  expanses  of  stone,  the 
stretch  of  the  river,  the  dimness  of  the  distance,  seemed 
to  isolate  them,  he  appeared,  by  renewing  their  halt 
and  looking  up  afresh  toward  the  town,  to  desire  to 
speed  her  on  her  way.  Many  things  meanwhile  had 
worked  within  her,  but  it  was  not  till  she  had  kept  him 
on  past  the  Temple  Station  of  the  Underground  that 
she  fairly  faced  her  opportunity.  Even  then  too  there 
were  still  other  things,  under  the  assault  of  which  she 
dropped,  for  the  moment,  Mrs.  Chorner.  "  Did  you 
really,"  she  asked,  "  believe  he'd  turn  up  alive?  " 

With  his  hands  in  his  pockets  he  continued  to  gloom 
at  her.  "  Up  there,  just  now,  with  Marshal — what  did 
you  take  me  as  believing?  " 

"  I  gave  you  up.  And  I  do  give  you.  You're  be 
yond  me.  Only,"  she  added,  "  I  seem  to  have  made 
you  out  since  then  as  really  staggered.  Though  I 
don't  say  it,"  she  ended,  "  to  bear  hard  upon  you." 

"  Don't  bear  hard,"  said  Howard  Bight  very  simply. 

It  moved  her,  for  all  she  could  have  said;  so  that  she 
had  for  a  moment  to  wonder  if  it  were  bearing  hard 
to  mention  some  of  features  of  the  rest  of  her 
thought.  If  she  was  to  have  him,  certainly,  it  couldn't 
be  without  knowing,  as  she  said  to  herself,  something 
— something  she  might  perhaps  mitigate  a  little  the 
solitude  of  his  penance  by  possessing.  "  There  were 
moments  when  I  even  imagined  that,  up  to  a  certain 
point,  you  were  still  in  communication  with  him.  Then 

404 


THE   PAPERS 

I  seemed  to  see  that  you  lost  touch — though  you 
braved  it  out  for  me;  that  you  had  begun  to  be  really 
uneasy  and  were  giving  him  up.  I  seemed  to  see," 
she  pursued  after  an  hesitation,  "  that  it  was  coming 
home  to  you  that  you  had  worked  him  up  too  high — 
that  you  were  feeling,  if  I  may  say  it,  that  you  had  bet 
ter  have  stopped  short.  I  mean  short  of  this." 

"  You  may  say  it,"  Bight  answered.  "  I  had  bet- 
ten" 

She  had  looked  at  him  a  moment.  "  There  was 
more  of  him  than  you  believed." 

"  There  was  more  of  him.  And  now,"  Bight  added, 
looking  across  the  river,  "  here's  all  of  him." 

"  Which  you  feel  you  have  on  your  heart?  " 

"  I  don't  know  where  I  have  it."  He  turned  his 
eyes  to  her.  "  I  must  wait." 

"  For  more  facts?  " 

"  Well,"  he  returned  after  a  pause,  "  hardly  perhaps 
for  i  more  '  if — with  what  we  have — this  is  all.  But 
I've  things  to  think  out.  I  must  wait  to  see  how  I 
feel.  I  did  nothing  but  what  he  wanted.  But  we 
were  behind  a  bolting  horse — whom  neither  of  us  could 
have  stopped." 

"  And  he,"  said  Maud,  "  is  the  one  dashed  to 
pieces." 

He  had  his  grave  eyes  on  her.  "  Would  you  like 
it  to  have  been  me?  " 

"  Of  course  not.  But  you  enjoyed  it — the  bolt; 
everything  up  to  the  smash.  Then,  with  that  ahead, 
you  were  nervous." 

"  I'm  nervous  still,"  said  Howard  Bight. 

Even  in  his  unexpected  softness  there  was  some 
thing  that  escaped  her,  and  it  made  in  her,  just  a  little, 
for  irritation.  "  What  I  mean  is  that  you  enjoyed  his 
terror.  That  was  what  led  you  on." 

"  No  doubt — it  was  so  grand  a  case.  But  do  you 
call  charging  me  with  it,"  the  young  man  asked,  "  not 
bearing  hard ?  " 

405 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  No  " — she  pulled  herself  up — "  it  is.  I  don't 
charge  you.  Only  I  feel  how  little — about  what  has 
been,  all  the  while,  behind — you  tell  me.  Nothing  ex 
plains." 

"  Explains  what?" 

"  Why,  his  act." 

He  gave  a  sign  of  impatience.  "  Isn't  the  explana 
tion  what  I  offered  a  moment  ago  to  give  you?  " 

It  came,  in  effect,  back  to  her.     "  For  use?  " 

"  For  use." 

"Only?" 

"  Only."     It  was  sharp. 

They  stood  a  little,  on  this,  face  to  face;  at  the  end  of 
which  she  turned  away.  "  I'll  go  to  Mrs.  Chorner." 
And  she  was  off  while  he  called  after  her  to  take  a  cab. 
It  was  quite  as  if  she  were  to  come  upon  him,  in  his 
strange  insistence,  for  the  fare. 

IX 

IF  she  kept  to  herself,  from  the  morrow  on,  for  three 
days,  her  adoption  of  that  course  was  helped,  as  she 
thankfully  felt,  by  the  great  other  circumstance  and  the 
great  public  commotion  under  cover  of  which  it  so 
little  mattered  what  became  of  private  persons.  It 
was  not  simply  that  she  had  her  reasons,  but  she 
couldn't  during  this  time  have  descended  again  to 
Fleet  Street  even  had  she  wished,  though  she  said  to 
herself  often  enough  that  her  behaviour  was  rank 
cowardice.  She  left  her  friend  alone  with  what  he  had 
to  face,  since,  as  she  found,  she  could  in  absence  from 
him  a  little  recover  herself.  In  his  presence,  the  night 
of  the  news,  she  knew  she  had  gone  to  pieces,  had 
yielded,  all  too  vulgarly,  to  a  weakness  proscribed  by 
her  original  view.  Her  original  view  had  been  that 
if  poor  Beadel,  worked  up,  as  she  inveterately  kept 
seeing  him,  should  embrace  the  tragic  remedy,  How- 

406 


THE   PAPERS 

ard  Bight  wouldn't  be  able  not  to  show  as  practically 
compromised.  He  wouldn't  be  able  not  to  smell  of 
the  wretched  man's  blood,  morally  speaking,  too 
strongly  for  condonations  or  complacencies.  There 
were  other  things,  truly,  that,  during  their  minutes  on 
the  Embankment,  he  had  been  able  to  do,  but  they 
constituted  just  the  sinister  subtlety  to  which  it  was 
well  that  she  should  not  again,  yet  awhile,  be  exposed. 
They  were  of  the  order — from  the  safe  summit  of 
Maida  Hill  she  could  make  it  out — that  had  proved 
corrosive  to  the  muddled  mind  of  the  Frankfort  fugi 
tive,  deprived,  in  the  midst  of  them,  of  any  honest 
issue.  Bight,  of  course,  rare  youth,  had  meant  no 
harm;  but  what  was  precisely  queerer,  what,  when  you 
came  to  judge,  less  human,  than  to  be  formed  for 
offence,  for  injury,  by  the  mere  inherent  play  of  the 
spirit  of  observation,  of  criticism,  by  the  inextinguish 
able  flame,  in  fine,  of  the  ironic  passion?  The  ironic 
passion,  in  such  a  world  as  surrounded  one,  might  as 
sert  itself  as  half  the  dignity,  the  decency,  of  life;  yet, 
none  the  less,  in  cases  where  one  had  seen  it  prove 
gruesomely  fatal  (and  not  to  one's  self,  which  was 
nothing,  but  to  others,  even  the  stupid  and  the  vul 
gar)  one  was  plainly  admonished  to — well,  stand  off  a 
little  and  think. 

This  was  what  Maud  Blandy,  while  the  Papers  roared 
and  resounded  more  than  ever  with  the  new  meat 
flung  to  them,  tried  to  consider  that  she  was  doing; 
so  that  the  attitude  held  her  fast  during  the  freshness  of 
the  event.  The  event  grew,  as  she  had  felt  it  would, 
with  every  further  fact  from  Frankfort  and  with  every 
extra-special,  and  reached  its  maximum,  inevitably,  in 
the  light  of  comment  and  correspondence.  These 
features,  before  the  catastrophe,  had  indubitably,  at  the 
last,  flagged  a  little,  but  they  revived  so  prodigiously, 
under  the  well-timed  shock,  that,  for  the  period  we 
speak  of,  the  poor  gentleman  seemed,  with  a  con- 

407 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

tinuance,  with  indeed  an  enhancement,  of  his  fine  old 
knack,  to  have  the  successive  editions  all  to  himself. 
They  had  been  always  of  course,  the  Papers,  very 
largely  about  him,  but  it  was  not  too  much  to  say 
that  at  this  crisis  they  were  about  nothing  else  worth 
speaking  of;  so  that  our  young  woman  could  but 
groan  in  spirit  at  the  direful  example  set  to  the 
emulous.  She  spared  an  occasional  moment  to  the 
vision  of  Mortimer  Marshal,  saw  him  drunk,  as  she 
might  have  said,  with  the  mere  fragrance  of  the  wine 
of  glory,  and  asked  herself  what  art  Bight  would  now 
use  to  furnish  him  forth  as  he  had  promised.  The 
mystery  of  BeadeFs  course  loomed,  each  hour,  so 
much  larger  and  darker  that  the  plan  would  have  to 
be  consummate,  or  the  private  knowledge  alike  be 
yond  cavil  and  beyond  calculation,  which  should  at 
tempt  either  to  sound  or  to  mask  the  appearances. 
Strangely  enough,  none  the  less,  she  even  now  found 
herself  thinking  of  her  rash  colleague  as  attached,  for 
the  benefit  of  his  surviving  victim,  to  this  idea;  she 
went  in  fact  so  far  as  to  imagine  him  half-upheld,  while 
the  public  wonder  spent  itself,  by  the  prospect  of  the 
fun  he  might  still  have  with  Marshal.  This  implied, 
she  was  not  unconscious,  that  his  notion  of  fun  was  in 
fernal,  and  would  of  course  be  especially  so  were  his 
knowledge  as  real  as  she  supposed  it.  He  would  in 
flate  their  foolish  friend  with  knowledge  that  was  false 
and  so  start  him  as  a  balloon  for  the  further  gape  of 
the  world.  This  was  the  image,  in  turn,  that  would 
yield  the  last  sport — the  droll  career  of  the  wretched 
man  as  wandering  forever  through  space  under  the  ap 
prehension,  in  time  duly  gained,  that  the  least  touch 
of  earth  would  involve  the  smash  of  his  car.  Afraid, 
thus,  to  drop,  but  at  the  same  time  equally  out  of  con 
ceit  of  the  chill  air  of  the  upper  and  increasing  soli 
tudes  to  which  he  had  soared,  he  would  become  such  a 
diminishing  speck,  though  traceably  a  prey  to  wild  hu- 

408 


THE   PAPERS 

man  gyrations,  as  she  might  conceive  Bight  to  keep  in 
view  for  future  recreation. 

It  wasn't  however  the  future  that  was  actually  so 
much  in  question  for  them  all  as  the  immediately  near 
present,  offered  to  her  as  the  latter  was  in  the  haunt 
ing  light  of  the  inevitably  unlimited  character  of  any 
real  inquiry.  The  inquiry  of  the  Papers,  immense  and 
ingenious,  had  yet  for  her  the  saving  quality  that  she 
didn't  take  it  as  real.  It  abounded,  truly,  in  hy 
potheses,  most  of  them  lurid  enough,  but  a  certain 
ease  of  mind  as  to  what  these  might  lead  to  was  per 
haps  one  of  the  advantages  she  owed  to  her  constant 
breathing  of  Fleet  Street  air.  She  couldn't  quite  have 
said  why,  but  she  felt  it  wouldn't  be  the  Papers  that, 
proceeding  from  link  to  link,  would  arrive  vindictively 
at  Bight's  connection  with  his  late  client.  The  enjoy 
ment  of  that  consummation  would  rest  in  another 
quarter,  and  if  the  young  man  were  as  uneasy  now  as 
she  thought  he  ought  to  be  even  while  she  hoped  he 
wasn't,  it  would  be  from  the  fear  in  his  eyes  of  such 
justice  as  was  shared  with  the  vulgar.  The  Papers 
held  an  inquiry,  but  the  Authorities,  as  they  vaguely 
figured  to  her,  would  hold  an  inquest;  which  was  a 
matter — even  when  international,  complicated  and  ar- 
rangeable,  between  Frankfort  and  London,  only  on 
some  system  unknown  to  her — more  in  tune  with  pos 
sibilities  of  exposure.  It  was  not,  as  need  scarce  be 
said,  from  the  exposure  of  Beadel  that  she  averted  her 
self;  it  was  from  the  exposure  of  the  person  who  had 
made  of  Beadel's  danger,  Beadel's  dread — whatever 
these  really  represented — the  use  that  the  occurrence 
at  Frankfort  might  be  shown  to  certify.  It  was  well 
before  her,  at  all  events,  that  if  Howard  Bight's  reflec 
tions,  so  stimulated,  kept  pace  at  all  with  her  own,  he 
would  at  the  worst,  or  even  at  the  best,  have  been 
glad  to  meet  her  again.  It  was  her  knowing  that  and 
yet  lying  low  that  she  privately  qualified  as  cowardice; 

409 


THE  BETTER   SORT 

it  was  the  instinct  of  watching  and  waiting  till  she 
should  see  how  great  the  danger  might  become.  And 
she  had  moreover  another  reason,  which  we  shall  pres 
ently  learn.  The  extra-specials  meanwhile  were  to  be 
had  in  Kilburnia  almost  as  soon  as  in  the  Strand;  the 
little  ponied  and  painted  carts,  tipped  at  an  extra 
ordinary  angle,  by  which  they  were  disseminated,  had 
for  that  matter,  she  observed,  never  rattled  up  the 
Edgware  Road  at  so  furious  a  rate.  Each  evening, 
it  was  true,  when  the  flare  of  Fleet  Street  would  have 
begun  really  to  smoke,  she  had,  in  resistance  to  old 
habit,  a  little  to  hold  herself;  but  for  three  successive 
days  she  tided  over  that  crisis.  It  was  not  till  the 
fourth  night  that  her  reaction  suddenly  declared  itself, 
determined  as  it  partly  was  by  the  latest  poster  that 
dangled  free  at  the  door  of  a  small  shop  just  out  of  her 
own  street.  The  establishment  dealt  in  buttons,  pins, 
tape,  and  silver  bracelets,  but  the  branch  of  its  in 
dustry  she  patronised  was  that  of  telegrams,  stamps, 
stationery,  and  the  "Edinburgh  rock  "  offered  to  the 
appetite  of  the  several  small  children  of  her  next-door 
neighbour  but  one.  "  The  Beadel-Muffet  Mystery, 
Startling  Disclosures,  Action  of  the  Treasury  " — at 
these  words  she  anxiously  gazed;  after  which  she  de 
cided.  It  was  as  if  from  her  hilltop,  from  her  very 
house-top,  to  which  the  window  of  her  little  room  was 
contiguous,  she  had  seen  the  red  light  in  the  east.  It 
had,  this  time,  its  colour.  She  went  on,  she  went  far, 
till  she  met  a  cab,  which  she  hailed,  "  regardless,"  she 
felt,  as  she  had  hailed  one  after  leaving  Bight  by  the 
river.  "  To  Fleet  Street  "  she  simply  said,  and  it  took 
her — that  she  felt  too — back  into  life. 

Yes,  it  was  life  again,  bitter,  doubtless,  but  with  a 
taste,  when,  having  stopped  her  cab,  short  of  her  in 
dication,  in  Covent  Garden,  she  walked  across  south 
ward  and  to  the  top  of  the  street  in  which  she  and  her 
friend  had  last  parted  with  Mortimer  Marshal.  She 

410 


THE   PAPERS 

came  down  to  their  favoured  pothouse,  the  scene  of 
Bight's  high  compact  with  that  worthy,  and  here, 
hesitating,  she  paused,  uncertain  as  to  where  she  had 
best  look  out.  Her  conviction,  on  her  way,  had  but 
grown;  Howard  Bight  would  be  looking  out — that 
to  a  certainty;  something  more,  something  portentous, 
had  happened  (by  her  evening  paper,  scanned  in  the 
light  of  her  little  shop  window,  she  had  taken  instant 
possession  of  it),  and  this  would  have  made  him  know 
that  she  couldn't  keep  up  what  he  would  naturally  call 
her  "game."  There  were  places  where  they  often 
met,  and  the  diversity  of  these — not  too  far  apart,  how 
ever, — would  be  his  only  difficulty.  He  was  on  the 
prowl,  in  fine,  with  his  hat  over  his  eyes;  and  she 
hadn't  known,  till  this  vision  of  him  came,  what  seeds 
of  romance  were  in  her  soul.  Romance,  the  other 
night,  by  the  river,  had  brushed  them  with  a  wing  that 
was  like  the  blind  bump  of  a  bat,  but  that  had  been 
something  on  his  part,  whereas  this  thought  of  bring 
ing  him  succour  as  to  a  Russian  anarchist,  to  some 
victim  of  society  or  subject  of  extradition,  was  all  her 
own,  and  was  of  this  special  moment.  She  saw  him 
with  his  hat  over  his  eyes;  she  saw  him  with  his  over 
coat  collar  turned  up;  she  saw  him  as  a  hunted  hero 
cleverly  drawn  in  one  of  the  serialising  weeklies  or, 
as  they  said,  in  some  popular  "  ply,"  and  the  effect  of 
it  was  to  open  to  her  on  the  spot  a  sort  of  happy  sense 
of  all  her  possible  immorality.  That  was  the  ro 
mantic  sense,  and  everything  vanished  but  the  richness 
of  her  thrill.  She  knew  little  enough  what  she  might 
have  to  do  for  him,  but  her  hope,  as  sharp  as  a  pang, 
was  that,  if  anything,  it  would  put  her  in  danger  too. 
The  hope,  as  it  happened  then,  was  crowned  on  the 
very  spot;  she  had  never  so  felt  in  danger  as  when, 
just  now,  turning  to  the  glazed  door  of  their  cookshop, 
she  saw  a  man,  within,  close  behind  the  glass,  still, 
stiff  and  ominous,  looking  at  her  hard.  The  light  of 

411 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

the  place  was  behind  him,  so  that  his  face,  in  the  dusk 
of  the  side-street,  was  dark,  but  it  was  visible  that 
she  showed  for  him  as  an  object  of  interest.  The  next 
thing,  of  course,  she  had  seen  more — seen  she  could  be 
such  an  object,  in  such  a  degree,  only  to  her  friend 
himself,  and  that  Bight  had  been  thus  sure  of  her;  and 
the  next  thing  after  that  had  passed  straight  in  and 
been  met  by  him,  as  he  stepped  aside  to  admit  her,  in 
silence.  He  had  his  hat  pulled  down  and,  quite  for 
getfully,  in  spite  of  the  warmth  within,  the  collar  of 
his  mackintosh  up. 

It  was  his  silence  that  completed  the  perfection  of 
these  things — the  perfection  that  came  out  most  of  all, 
oddly,  after  he  had  corrected  them  by  removal  and 
was  seated  with  her,  in  their  common  corner,  at  tea, 
with  the  room  almost  to  themselves  and  no  one  to  con 
sider  but  Marshal's  little  man  in  the  obvious  wig  and 
the  blue  spectacles,  the  great  authority  on  the  inner 
life  of  the  criminal  classes.  Strangest  of  all,  nearly,  was 
it,  that,  though  now  essentially  belonging,  as  Maud 
felt,  to  this  order,  they  were  not  conscious  of  the 
danger  of  his  presence.  What  she  had  wanted  most 
immediately  to  learn  was  how  Bight  had  known;  but 
he  made,  and  scarce  to  her  surprise,  short  work  of  that. 
"I've  known  every  evening — known,  that  is,  that 
you've  wanted  to  come;  and  I've  been  here  every 
evening,  waiting  just  there  till  I  should  see  you.  It 
was  but  a  question  of  time.  To-night,  however,  I  was 
sure — for  there's,  after  all,  something  of  me  left.  Be 
sides,  besides !  "  He  had,  in  short,  another  certi 
tude.  '  You've  been  ashamed — I  knew,  when  I  saw 
nothing  come,  that  you  would  be.  But  also  that  that 
would  pass." 

Maud  found  him,  as  she  would  have  said,  all  there. 
"  I've  been  ashamed,  you  mean,  of  being  afraid?  " 

"  You've  been  ashamed  about  Mrs.  Chorner;  that  is, 
about  me.  For  that  you  did  go  to  her  I  know," 

412 


THE   PAPERS 

"  Have  you  been  then  yourself?  " 

"  For  what  do  you  take  me?"  He  seemed  to  won 
der.  "  What  had  I  to  do  with  her — except  for  you?  " 
And  then  before  she  could  say :  "  Didn't  she  receive 
you?" 

'  Yes,  as  you  said,  she  '  wanted  '  me." 

"  She  jumped  at  you?  " 

"  Jumped  at  me.     She  gave  me  an  hour." 

He  flushed  with  an  interest  that,  the  next  moment, 
had  flared  in  spite  of  everything  into  amusement.  "  So 
that  I  was  right,  in  my  perfect  wisdom,  up  to  the 
hilt?" 

"  Up  to  the  hilt.     She  took  it  from  me." 

"  That  the  public  wants  her?  " 

"  That  it  won't  take  a  refusal.     So  she  opened  up." 

"Overflowed?" 

"  Prattled." 

"Gushed?" 

"Well,  recognised  and  embraced  her  opportunity. 
Kept  me  there  till  midnight.  Told  me,  as  she  called 
it,  everything  about  everything." 

They  looked  at  each  other  long  on  it,  and  it  deter 
mined  in  Bight  at  last  a  brave  clatter  of  his  crockery. 
"  They're  stupendous !  " 

"  It's  you  that  are,"  Maud  replied,  "  to  have  found 
it  out  so.  You  know  them  down  to  the  ground." 

"  Oh,  what  I've  found  out !  "  But  it  was  more 

than  he  could  talk  of  then.  "  If  I  hadn't  really  felt 
sure,  I  wouldn't  so  have  urged  you.  Only  now,  if 
you  please,  I  don't  understand  your  having  apparently 
but  kept  her  in  your  pocket." 

"  Of  course  you  don't,"  said  Maud  Blandy.  To 
which  she  added,  "  And  I  don't  quite  myself.  I  only 
know  that  now  that  I  have  her  there  nothing  will  in 
duce  me  to  take  her  out." 

"  Then  you  potted  her,  permit  me  to  say,"  he  an 
swered,  "  on  absolutely  false  pretences." 

413 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"Absolutely;  which  is  precisely  why  I've  been 
ashamed.  I  made  for  home  with  the  whole  thing," 
she  explained,  "  and  there,  that  night,  in  the  hours 
till  morning,  when,  turning  it  over,  I  saw  all  it  really 
was,  I  knew  that  I  couldn't — that  I  would  rather  choose 
that  shame,  that  of  not  doing  for  her  what  I  had 
offered,  than  the  hideous  honesty  of  bringing  it  out. 
Because,  you  see,"  Maud  declared,  "  it  was — well,  it 
was  too  much." 

Bight  followed  her  with  a  sharpness !  "  It  was  so 
good?" 

"  Quite  beautiful !     Awful !  " 

He  wondered.     "  Really  charming?  " 

"  Charming,  interesting,  horrible.  It  was  true — 
and  it  was  the  whole  thing.  It  was  herself — and  it 
was  him,  all  of  him  too.  Not  a  bit  made  up,  but  just 
the  poor  woman  melted  and  overflowing,  yet  at  the 
same  time  raging — like  the  hot-water  tap  when  it 
boils.  I  never  saw  anything  like  it;  everything,  as  you 
guaranteed,  came  out;  it  has  made  me  know  things. 
So,  to  have  come  down  here  with  it,  to  have  begun  to 
hawk  it,  either  through  you,  as  you  kindly  proposed, 
or  in  my  own  brazen  person,  to  the  highest  bidder — 
well,  I  felt  that  I  didn't  have  to,  after  all,  if  I  didn't  want 
to,  and  that  if  it's  the  only  way  I  can  get  money  I 
would  much  rather  starve." 

"  I  see."  Howard  Bight  saw  all.  "  And  that's  why 
you're  ashamed?  " 

She  hesitated — she  was  both  so  remiss  and  so  firm. 
"I  knew  that  by  my  not  coming  back  to  you,  you 
would  have  guessed,  have  found  me  wanting;  just,  for 
that  matter,  as  she  has  found  me.  And  I  couldn't  ex 
plain.  I  can't — I  can't  to  lier.  So  that,"  the  girl  went 
on,  "  I  shall  have  done,  so  far  as  her  attitude  to  me 
was  to  be  concerned,  something  more  indelicate,  some 
thing  more  indecent,  than  if  I  had  passed  her  on.  I 
shall  have  wormed  it  all  out  of  her,  and  then,  by  not 

414 


THE   PAPERS 

having  carried  it  to  market,  disappointed  and  cheated 
her.  She  was  to  have  heard  it  cried  like  fresh  her- 
ring." 

Bight  was  immensely  taken.  "  Oh,  beyond  all 
doubt.  You're  in  a  fix.  You've  played,  you  see,  a 
most  unusual  game.  The  code  allows  everything  but 
that." 

"  Precisely.  So  I  must  take  the  consequences. 
I'm  dishonoured,  but  I  shall  have  to  bear  it.  And  I 
shall  bear  it  by  getting  out.  Out,  I  mean,  of  the  whole 
thing.  I  shall  chuck  them." 

"  Chuck  the  Papers?  "  he  asked  in  his  simplicity. 

But  his  wonder,  she  saw,  was  overdone — their  eyes 
too  frankly  met.  "  Damn  the  Papers !  "  said  Maud 
Blandy. 

It  produced  in  his  sadness  and  weariness  the  sweetest 
smile  that  had  yet  broken  through.  "  We  shall,  be 
tween  us,  if  we  keep  it  up,  ruin  them !  And  you  make 
nothing,"  he  went  on,  "  of  one's  having  at  last  so 
beautifully  started  you?  Your  complaint,"  he  de 
veloped,  "  was  that  you  couldn't  get  in.  Then  sud 
denly,  with  a  splendid  jump,  you  are  in.  Only,  how 
ever,  to  look  round  you  and  say  with  disgust  *  Oh, 
here?1  Where  the  devil  do  you  want  to  be?" 

"  Ah,  that's  another  question.  At  least,"  she  said, 
"  I  can  scrub  floors.  I  can  take  it  out  perhaps — my 
swindle  of  Mrs.  Chorner,"  she  pursued — "in  scrubbing 
hers." 

He  only,  after  this,  looked  at  her  a  little.  "  She  has 
written  to  you?  " 

"  Oh,  in  high  dudgeon.  I  was  to  have  attended  to 
the  '  press-cutting '  people  as  well,  and  she  was  to 
have  seen  herself,  at  the  furthest,  by  the  second  morn 
ing  (that  was  day-before-yesterday)  all  over  the  place. 
She  wants  to  know  what  I  mean." 

"  And  what  do  you  answer?  " 

"  That  it's  hard,  of  course,  to  make  her  understand, 

415 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

but  that  I've  felt  her,  since  parting  with  her,  simply  to 
be  too  good." 

"  Signifying  by  it,  naturally,"  Bight  amended,  "  that 
you've  felt  yourself  to  be  so." 

"  Well,  that  too  if  you  like.     But  she  was  exquisite." 

He  considered.     "  Would  she  do  for  a  ply?  " 

"  Oh  God,  no !  " 

"Then  for  a  tile?" 

"  Perhaps,"  said  Maud  Blandy  at  last. 

He  understood,  visibly,  the  shade,  as  well  as  the 
pause;  which,  together,  held  him  a  moment.  But  it 
was  of  something  else  he  spoke.  "  And  you  who  had 
found  they  would  never  bite !  " 

"  Oh,  I  was  wrong,"  she  simply  answered.  "  Once 
they've  tasted  blood !  " 

"  They  want  to  devour,"  her  friend  laughed,  "  not 
only  the  bait  and  the  hook,  but  the  line  and  the  rod 
and  the  poor  fisherman  himself?  Except,"  he  con 
tinued,  "  that  poor  Mrs.  Chorner  hasn't  yet  even 
*  tasted.'  However,"  he  added,  "  she  obviously  will." 

Maud's  assent  was  full.  "  She'll  find  others.  She'll 
appear." 

He  waited  a  moment — his  eye  had  turned  to  the 
door  of  the  street.  "  Then  she  must  be  quick.  These 
are  things  of  the  hour." 

"  You  hear  something?  "  she  asked,  his  expression 
having  struck  her. 

He  listened  again,  but  it  was  nothing.  "k  No — but 
it's  somehow  in  the  air." 

"What  is?" 

"  Well,  that  she  must  hurry.  She  must  get  in. 
She  must  get  out."  He  had  his  arms  on  the  table,  and, 
locking  his  hands  and  inclining  a  little,  he  brought  his 
face  nearer  to  her.  "  My  sense  to-night's  of  an  open 
ness !  I  don't  know  what's  the  matter.  Except, 

that  is,  that  you're  great." 

She  looked  at  him,  not  drawing  back.  "  You  know 
416 


THE   PAPERS 

everything — so  immeasurably  more  than  you  admit  or 
than  you  tell  me.  You  mortally  perplex  and  worry 
me." 

It  made  him  smile.  "  You're  great,  you're  great," 
he  only  repeated.  "  You  know  it's  quite  awfully 
swagger,  what  you've  done." 

"  What  I  haven't,  you  mean;  what  I  never  shall. 
Yes,"  she  added,  but  now  sinking  back — "of  course 
you  see  that  too.  What  don't  you  see,  and  what,  with 
such  ways,  is  to  be  the  end  of  you?" 

"You're  great,  you're  great" — he  kept  it  up.  "  And 
I  like  you.  That's  to  be  the  end  of  me." 

So,  for  a  minute,  they  left  it,  while  she  came  to  the 
thing  that,  for  the  last  half-hour,  had  most  been  with 
her.  "  What  is  the  '  action/  announced  to-night,  of 
the  Treasury?  " 

"  Oh,  they've  sent  somebody  out,  partly,  it  would 
seem,  at  the  request  of  the  German  authorities,  to  take 
possession." 

"  Possession,  you  mean,  of  his  effects?  " 

'  Yes,  and  legally,  administratively,  of  the  whole 
matter." 

"  Seeing,    you    mean,    that    there's    still    more    in 

it p  " 

"  Than  meets  the  eye,"  said  Bight,  "  precisely.  But 
it  won't  be  till  the  case  is  transferred,  as  it  presently 
will  be,  to  this  country,  that  they  will  see.  Then  it  will 
be  funny." 

"  Funny?  "  Maud  Blandy  asked. 

"  Oh,  lovely." 

"  Lovely  for  you?  " 

"  Why  not?  The  bigger  the  whole  thing  grows,  the 
lovelier." 

"  You've  odd  notions,"  she  said,  "  of  loveliness. 
Do  you  expect  his  situation  won't  be  traced  to  you? 
Don't  you  suppose  you'll  be  forced  to  speak?  " 

"  To  '  speak  ' ?  " 

417 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  Why,  if  it  is  traced.  What  do  you  make,  other 
wise,  of  the  facts  to-night?  " 

"  Do  you  call  them  facts?  "  the  young  man  asked. 

"  I  mean  the  Astounding  Disclosures/' 

"  Well,  do  you  only  read  your  headlines?  '  The 
most  astounding  disclosures  are  expected  ' — that's  the 
valuable  text.  Is  it,"  he  went  on,  "  what  fetched 
you?" 

His  answer  was  so  little  of  one  that  she  made  her 
own  scant.  "  What  fetched  me  is  that  I  can't  rest." 

"  No  more  can  I,"  he  returned.  "  But  in  what 
danger  do  you  think  me?  " 

"  In  any  in  which  you  think  yourself.  Why  not,  if 
I  don't  mean  in  danger  of  hanging?  " 

He  looked  at  her  so  that  she  presently  took  him  for 
serious  at  last — which  was  different  from  his  having 
been  either  worried  or  perverse.  "  Of  public  discredit, 
you  mean — for  having  so  unmercifully  baited  him? 
Yes,"  he  conceded  with  a  straightness  that  now  sur 
prised  her,  "  I've  thought  of  that.  But  how  can  the 
baiting  be  proved?  " 

"  If  they  take  possession  of  his  effects  won't  his 
effects  be  partly  his  papers,  and  won't  they,  among 
them,  find  letters  from  you,  and  won't  your  letters 
show  it?" 

"Well,  show  what?" 

"  Why,  the  frenzy  to  which  you  worked  him — and 
thereby  your  connection." 

"  They  won't  show  it  to  dunderheads." 

"  And  are  they  all  dunderheads?  " 

"  Every  mother's  son  of  them — where  anything  so 
beautiful  is  concerned." 

"  Beautiful?  "  Maud  murmured. 

"  Beautiful,  my  letters  are — gems  of  the  purest  ray. 
I'm  covered." 

She  let  herself  go — she  looked  at  him  long. 
:'  You're  a  wonder.  But  all  the  same,"  she  added, 
"you  don't  like  it." 

418 


THE   PAPERS 

"  Well,  I'm  not  sure."  Which  clearly  meant,  how 
ever,  that  he  almost  was,  from  the  way  in  which,  the 
next  moment,  he  had  exchanged  the  question  for  an 
other.  ''  You  haven't  anything  to  tell  me  of  Mrs. 
Chorner's  explanation? " 

Oh,  as  to  this,  she  had  already  considered  and 
chosen.  "  What  do  you  want  of  it  when  you  know 
so  much  more?  So  much  more,  I  mean,  than  even 
she  has  known." 

"  Then  she  hasn't  known ?  " 

"There  you  are !  What,"  asked  Maud,  "  are  you 
talking  about?  " 

She  had  made  him  smile,  even  though  his  smile  was 
perceptibly  pale;  and  he  continued.  "  Of  what  was 
behind.  Behind  any  game  of  mine.  Behind  every 
thing." 

"  So  am  I  then  talking  of  that.  No,"  said  Maud, 
"  she  hasn't  known,  and  she  doesn't  know,  I  judge, 
to  this  hour.  Her  explanation  therefore  doesn't  bear 
upon  that.  It  bears  upon  something  else." 

"Well,  my  dear,  on  what?" 

He  was  not,  however,  to  find  out  by  simply  calling 
her  his  dear;  for  she  had  not  sacrificed  the  reward  of 
her  interview  in  order  to  present  the  fine  flower  of  it, 
unbridled,  even  to  him.  "  You  know  how  little  you've 
ever  told  me,  and  you  see  how,  at  this  instant,  even 
while  you  press  me  to  gratify  you,  you  give  me  noth 
ing.  I  give,"  she  smiled — yet  not  a  little  flushed— 
"  nothing  for  nothing." 

He  showed  her  he  felt  baffled,  but  also  that  she  was 
perverse.  "  What  you  want  of  me  is  what,  originally, 
you  wouldn't  hear  of :  anything  so  dreadful,  that  is,  as 
his  predicament  must  be.  You  saw  that  to  make  him 
want  to  keep  quiet  he  must  have  something  to  be 
ashamed  of,  and  that  was  just  what,  in  pity,  you  posi 
tively  objected  to  learning.  You've  grown,"  Bight 
smiled,  "  more  interested  since." 

419 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  If  I  have/'  said  Maud,  "  it's  because  you  have. 
Now,  at  any  rate,  I'm  not  afraid." 

He  waited  a  moment.     "  Are  you  very  sure?  " 

'  Yes,  for  my  mystification  is  greater  at  last  than  my 
delicacy.  I  don't  know  till  I  do  know  " — and  she  ex 
pressed  this  even  with  difficulty — "  what  it  has  been, 
all  the  while,  that  it  was  a  question  of,  and  what,  conse 
quently,  all  the  while,  we've  been  talking  about." 

"  Ah,  but  why  should  you  know?  "  the  young  man 
inquired.  "  I  can  understand  your  needing  to,  or 
somebody's  needing  to,  if  we  were  in  a  ply,  or  even, 
though  in  a  less  degree,  if  we  were  in  a  tile.  But  since, 
my  poor  child,  we're  only  in  the  delicious  muddle  of 
life  itself !" 

"  You  may  have  all  the  plum  of  the  pudding,  and  I 
nothing  but  a  mouthful  of  cold  suet?  "  Maud  pushed 
back  her  chair;  she  had  taken  up  her  old  gloves;  but 
while  she  put  them  on  she  kept  in  view  both  her  friend 
and  her  grievance.  "  I  don't  believe,"  she  at  last 
brought  out,  "  that  there  is,  or  that  there  ever  was, 
anything." 

"  Oh,  oh,  oh !  "  Bight  laughed. 

"  There's  nothing,"  she  continued,  " '  behind.' 
There's  no  horror." 

"  You  hold,  by  that,"  said  Bight,  "  that  the  poor 
man's  deed  is  all  me?  That  does  make  it,  you  see,  bad 
for  me." 

She  got  up  and,  there  before  him,  finished  smooth 
ing  her  creased  gloves.  "  Then  we  are — if  there's  such 
richness — in  a  ply." 

"  Well,  we  are  not,  at  all  events — so  far  as  we  our 
selves  are  concerned — the  spectators."  And  he  also 
got  up.  "  The  spectators  must  look  out  for  them 
selves." 

"  Evidently,  poor  things !  "  Maud  sighed.  And  as 
he  still  stood  as  if  there  might  be  something  for  him 
to  come  from  her,  she  made  her  attitude  clear — which 

420 


THE   PAPERS 

was  quite  the  attitude  now  of  tormenting  him  a  little. 
"  If  you  know  something  about  him  which  she  doesn't, 
and  also  which  /  don't,  she  knows  something  about 
him — as  I  do  too — which  you  don't." 

"  Surely :  when  it's  exactly  what  I'm  trying  to  get 
out  of  you.  Are  you  afraid  /'//  sell  it?  " 

But  even  this  taunt,  which  she  took. moreover  at  its 
worth,  didn't  move  her.  "  You  definitely  then  won't 
tell  me?" 

"  You  mean  that  if  I  will  you'll  tell  me?  ' 

She  thought  again.  "  Well — yes.  But  on  that  con 
dition  alone." 

"  Then  you're  safe,"  said  Howard  Bight.  "  I  can't, 
really,  my  dear,  tell  you.  Besides,  if  it's  to  come 
out !" 

"  I'll  wait  in  that  case  till  it  does.  But  I  must  warn 
you,"  she  added,  "  that  my  facts  wont  come  out." 

He  considered.  "  Why  not,  since  the  rush  at  her  is 
probably  even  now  being  made?  Why  not,  if  she  re 
ceives  others?  " 

Well,  Maud  could  think  too.  "  She'll  receive  them, 
but  they  won't  receive  her.  Others  are  like  your 
people — dunderheads.  Others  won't  understand, 
won't  count,  won't  exist."  And  she  moved  to  the 
door.  "  There  are  no  others."  Opening  the  door, 
she  had  reached  the  street  with  it,  even  while  he  re 
plied,  overtaking  her,  that  there  were  certainly  none 
such  as  herself;  but  they  had  scarce  passed  out  before 
her  last  remark  was,  to  their  somewhat  disconcerted 
sense,  sharply  enough  refuted.  There  was  still  the 
other  they  had  forgotten,  and  that  neglected  quantity, 
plainly  in  search  of  them  and  happy  in  his  instinct  of 
the  chase,  now  stayed  their  steps  in  the  form  of  Morti 
mer  Marshal. 


THE   BETTER   SORT 


X 

HE  was  coming  in  as  they  came  out;  and  his  "  I  hoped 
I  might  find  you,"  an  exhalation  of  cool  candour  that 
they  took  full  in  the  face,  had  the  effect,  the  next  mo 
ment,  of  a  great  soft  carpet,  all  flowers  and  figures, 
suddenly  unrolled  for  them  to  walk  upon  and  before 
which  they  felt  a  scruple.  Their  ejaculation,  Maud 
was  conscious,  couldn't  have  passed  for  a  welcome, 
and  it  wasn't  till  she  saw  the  poor  gentleman  checked 
a  little,  in  turn,  by  their  blankness,  that  she  fully  per 
ceived  how  interesting  they  had  just  become  to  them 
selves.  His  face,  however,  while,  in  their  arrest,  they 
neither  proposed  to  re-enter  the  shop  with  him  nor 
invited  him  to  proceed  with  them  anywhere  else — his 
face,  gaping  there,  for  Bight's  promised  instructions, 
like  a  fair  receptacle,  shallow  but  with  all  the  capacity 
of  its  flatness,  brought  back  so  to  our  young  woman 
the  fond  fancy  her  companion  had  last  excited  in  him 
that  he  profited  just  a  little — and  for  sympathy  in  spite 
of  his  folly — by  her  sense  that  with  her  too  the  latter 
had  somehow  amused  himself.  This  placed  her,  for 
the  brief  instant,  in  a  strange  fellowship  with  their  vis 
itor's  plea,  under  the  impulse  of  which,  without  more 
thought,  she  had  turned  to  Bight.  "Your  eager  claim 
ant,"  she,  however,  simply  said,  "  for  the  opportunity 
now  so  beautifully  created." 

"I've  ventured,"  Mr.  Marshal  glowed  back,  "  to 
come  and  remind  you  that  the  hours  are  fleeting." 

Bight  had  surveyed  him  with  eyes  perhaps  equivocal. 

"  You're  afraid  someone  else  will  step  in?  " 

"  Well,  with  the  place  so  tempting  and  so  emp- 
ty— -I" 

Maud  made  herself  again  his  voice.  "  Mr  Marshal 
sees  it  empty  itself  perhaps  too  fast." 

He  acknowledged,  in  his  large,  bright  way,  the  help 
422 


THE   PAPERS 

afforded  him  by  her  easy  lightness.  "  I  do  want  to  get 
in,  you  know,  before  anything  happens." 

"  And  what,"  Bight  inquired,  "  are  you  afraid  may 
happen?  " 

"  Well,  to  make  sure,"  he  smiled,  "  I  want  myself, 
don't  you  see,  to  happen  first." 

Our  young  woman,  at  this,  fairly  fell,  for  her  friend, 
into  his  sweetness.  "  Do  let  him  happen !  " 

"  Do  let  me  happen !"    Mr.  Marshal  followed  it  up. 

They  stood  there  together,  where  they  had  paused, 
in  their  strange  council  of  three,  and  their  extraordi 
nary  tone,  in  connection  with  their  number,  might 
have  marked  them,  for  some  passer  catching  it,  as  per 
sons  not  only  discussing  questions  supposedly  reserved 
for  the  Fates,  but  absolutely  enacting  some  encounter 
of  these  portentous  forces.  "  Let  you — let  you?  " 
Bight  gravely  echoed,  while  on  the  sound,  for  the  mo 
ment,  immensities  might  have  hung.  It  was  as  far, 
however,  as  he  was  to  have  time  to  speak,  for  even 
while  his  voice  was  in  the  air  another,  at  first  remote 
and  vague,  joined  it  there  on  an  ominous  note  and 
hushed  all  else  to  stillness.  It  came,  through  the  roar 
of  thoroughfares,  from  the  direction  of  Fleet  Street, 
and  it  made  our  interlocutors  exchange  an  altered 
look.  They  recognized  it,  the  next  thing,  as  the  howl, 
again,  of  the  Strand,  and  then  but  an  instant  elapsed 
before  it  flared  into  the  night.  "  Return  of  Beadel- 
Muffet!  Tremenjous  Sensation!  " 

Tremenjous  indeed,  so  tremenjous  that,  each  really 
turning  as  pale  with  it  as  they  had  turned,  on  the  same 
spot,  the  other  time  and  with  the  other  news,  they 
stood  long  enough  stricken  and  still  for  the  cry,  multi 
plied  in  a  flash,  again  to  reach  them.  They  couldn't 
have  said  afterwards  who  first  took  it  up.  "  Re 
turn ?  " 

"  From  the  Dead — I  say!  "  poor  Marshal  piercingly 
quavered. 

423 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"Then  he  hasn't  been ?"  Maud  gasped  it  with 

him  at  Bight. 

But  that  genius,  clearly,  was  not  less  deeply  affected. 
"  He's  alive?  "  he  breathed  in  a  long,  soft  wail  in  which 
admiration  appeared  at  first  to  contend  with  amaze 
ment  and  then  the  sense  of  the  comic  to  triumph  over 
both.  Howard  Bight  uncontrollably — it  might  have 
struck  them  as  almost  hysterically — laughed. 

The  others  could  indeed  but  stare.  "  Then  who's 
dead?  "  piped  Mortimer  Marshal. 

"  I'm  afraid,  Mr.  Marshal,  that  you  are,"  the  young 
man  returned,  more  gravely,  after  a  minute.  He 
spoke  as  if  he  saw  how  dead. 

Poor  Marshal  was  lost.  "But  someone  was 
killed !" 

"  Someone  undoubtedly  was,  but  Beadel  somehow 
has  survived  it." 

"  Has  he,  then,  been  playing  the  game ?  "     It 

baffled  comprehension. 

Yet  it  wasn't  even  that  what  Maud  most  wondered. 
"  Have  you  all  the  while  really  known?  "  she  asked  of 
Howard  Bight. 

He  met  it  with  a  look  that  puzzled  her  for  the  in 
stant,  but  that  she  then  saw  to  mean,  half  with  amuse 
ment,  half  with  sadness,  that  his  genius  was,  after  all, 
simpler.  "  I  wish  I  had.  I  really  believed." 

"  All  along?  " 

"  No;  but  after  Frankfort." 

She  remembered  things.  "  You  haven't  had  a  no 
tion  this  evening?  " 

"  Only  from  the  state  of  my  nerves." 

"  Yes^jour  nerves  must  be  in  a  state !  "  And  some 
how  now  she  had  no  pity  for  him.  It  was  almost  as  if 
she  were,  frankly,  disappointed.  "  /,"  she  then  boldly 
said,  "  didn't  believe." 

"  If  you  had  mentioned  that  then,"  Marshal  ob 
served  to  her,  "  you  would  have  saved  me  an  awkward 
ness." 

424 


THE   PAPERS 

But  Bight  took  him  up.  "  She  did  believe — so  that 
she  might  punish  me." 

"  Punish  you ?  " 

Maud  raised  her  hand  at  her  friend.  "  He  doesn't 
understand." 

He  was  indeed,  Mr.  Marshal,  fully  pathetic  now. 
"  No,  I  don't  understand.  Not  a  wee  bit." 

"  Well,"  said  Bight  kindly,  "  we  none  of  us  do.  We 
must  give  it  up." 

"  You  think  /  really  must ?  " 

"  You,  sir,"  Bight  smiled,  "  most  of  all.  The  places 
seem  so  taken." 

His  client,  however,  clung.  "  He  won't  die 
again ?  " 

"  If  he  does  he'll  again  come  to  life.  He'll  never 
die.  Only  we  shall  die.  He's  immortal." 

He  looked  up  and  down,  this  inquirer;  he  listened  to 
the  howl  of  the  Strand,  not  yet,  as  happened,  brought 
nearer  to  them  by  one  of  the  hawkers.  And  yet  it 
was  as  if,  overwhelmed  by  his  lost  chance,  he  knew 
himself  too  wreak  even  for  their  fond  aid.  He  still 
therefore  appealed.  "  Will  this  be  a  boom  for  him?  " 

"  His  return?  Colossal.  For — fancy! — it  was  ex 
actly  what  we  talked  of,  you  remember,  the  other 
day,  as  the  ideal.  I  mean,"  Bight  smiled,  "  for  a  man 
to  be  lost,  and  yet  at  the  same  time " 

'  To  be  found?  "  poor  Marshal  too  hungrily  mused. 

"  To  be  boomed,"  Bight  continued,  "  by  his  smash 
and  yet  never  to  have  been  too  smashed  to  know  how 
he  was  booming." 

It  was  wonderful  for  Maud  too.  "  To  have  given  it 
all  up,  and  yet  to  have  it  all." 

"Oh,  better  than  that,"  said  her  friend :  "  to  have 
more  than  all,  and  more  than  you  gave  up.  Beadel," 
he  was  careful  to  explain  to  their  companion,  "  will 
have  more." 

Mr.  Marshal  struggled  with  it.  "  More  than  if  he 
were  dead?  " 

425 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

"  More,"  Bight  laughed,  "  than  if  he  weren't !  It's 
what  you  would  have  liked,  as  I  understand  you,  isn't 
it?  and  what  you  would  have  got,  It's  what  /  would 
have  helped  you  to." 

"  But  who  then,"  wailed  Marshal,  "  helps  him?  " 

"  Nobody.     His  star.     His  genius." 

Mortimer  Marshal  glared  about  him  as  for  some 
sign  of  such  aids  in  his  own  sphere.  It  embraced,  his 
own  sphere  too,  the  roaring  Strand,  yet — mystification 
and  madness ! — it  was  with  Beadel  the  Strand  was  roar 
ing.  A  hawker,  from  afar,  at  sight  of  the  group, 
was  already  scaling  the  slope.  "  Ah,  but  how  the 
devil ?  " 

Bight  pointed  to  this  resource.     "  Go  and  see." 

"But  don't  you  want  them?  "  poor  Marshal  asked  as 
the  others  retreated. 

"  The  Papers?  "  They  stopped  to  answer.  "  No, 
never  again.  We've  done  with  them.  We  give  it  up." 

"  I  mayn't  again  see  you?  " 

Dismay  and  a  last  clutch  were  in  Marshal's  face,  but 
Maud,  who  had  taken  her  friend's  meaning  in  a  flash, 
found  the  word  to  meet  them.  "  We  retire  from  busi 
ness." 

With  which  they  turned  again  to  move  in  the  other 
sense,  presenting  their  backs  to  Fleet  Street.  They 
moved  together  up  the  rest  of  the  hill,  going  on  in 
silence,  not  arrested  by  another  little  shrieking  boy, 
not  diverted  by  another  extra-special,  not  pausing 
again  till,  at  the  end  of  a  few  minutes,  they  found 
themselves  in  the  comparative  solitude  of  Covent  Gar 
den,  encumbered  with  the  traces  of  its  traffic,  but  now 
given  over  to  peace.  The  howl  of  the  Strand  had 
ceased,  their  client  had  vanished  forever,  and  from  the 
centre  of  the  empty  space  they  could  look  up  and  see 
stars.  One  of  these  was  of  course  Beadel-Muffet's, 
and  the  consciousness  of  that,  for  the  moment,  kept- 
down  any  arrogance  of  triumph.  He  still  hung  above 

426 


THE   PAPERS 

them,  he  ruled,  immortal,  the  night;  they  were  far 
beneath,  and  he  now  transcended  their  world;  but  a 
sense  of  relief,  of  escape,  of  the  light,  still  unquenched, 
of  their  old  irony,  made  them  stand  there  face  to  face. 
There  was  more  between  them  now  than  there  had 
ever  been,  but  it  had  ceased  to  separate  them,  it  sus 
tained  them  in  fact  like  a  deep  water  on  which  they 
floated  closer.  Still,  however,  there  was  something 
Maud  needed.  "  It  had  been  all  the  while  worked?  " 

"  Ah,  not,  before  God — since  I  lost  sight  of  him — 
by  me." 

"  Then  by  himself?  " 

"  I  dare  say.  But  there  are  plenty  for  him.  He's 
beyond  me." 

"  But  you  thought,"  she  said,  "it  would  be  so.  You 
thought,"  she  declared,  "  something." 

Bight  hesitated.  "  I  thought  it  would  be  great  if  he 
could.  And  as  he  could — why,  it  is  great.  But  all  the 
same  I  too  was  sold.  I  am  sold.  That's  why  I  give 
up." 

"  Then  it's  why  7  do.  We  must  do  something,"  she 
smiled  at  him,  "  that  requires  less  cleverness." 

"  We  must  love  each  other,"  said  Howard  Bight. 

"  But  can  we  live  by  that?  " 

He  thought  again;  then  he  decided.     "Yes." 

"Ah,"  Maud  amended,  "  we  must  be  '  littery.' 
We've  now  got  stuff." 

"  For  the  dear  old  ply,  for  the  rattling  good  tile?  Ah, 
they  take  better  stuff  than  this — though  this  too  is 
good." 

"  Yes,"  she  granted  on  reflection,  "  this  is  good,  but 
it  has  bad  holes.  Who  was  the  dead  man  in  -the  locked 
hotel  room?" 

"  Oh,  I  don't  mean  that.  That"  said  Bight,  "  he'll 
splendidly  explain." 

"  But  how?  " 

"  Why,  in  the  Papers.     To-morrow." 
427 


THE   BETTER   SORT 

Maud  wondered.     "  So  soon?  " 

"  If  he  returned  to-night,  and  it's  not  yet  ten  o'clock, 
there's  plenty  of  time.  It  will  be  in  all  of  them — while 
the  universe  waits.  He'll  hold  us  in  the  hollow  of  his 
hand.  His  chance  is  just  there.  And  there,"  said  the 
young  man,  "  will  be  his  greatness." 

"  Greater  than  ever  then?  " 

"  Quadrupled." 

She  followed;  then  it  made  her  seize  his  arm.  "  Go 
to  him!" 

Bight  frowned.     "  '  Go  ' — -?  " 

"  This  instant.     You  explain !  " 

He  understood,  but  only  to  shake  his  head. 
"  Never  again.  I  bow  to  him." 

Well,  she  after  a  little  understood;  but  she  thought 
again. 

"  You  mean  that  the  great  hole  is  that  he  really  had 
no  reason,  no  funk ?  " 

"  I've  wondered,"  said  Howard  Bight. 

"  Whether  he  had  done  anything  to  make  publicity 
embarrassing?  " 

"  I've  wondered,"  the  young  man  repeated. 

"  But  I  thought  you  knew !  " 

"  So  did  I.  But  I  thought  also  I  knew  he  was 
dead.  However,"  Bight  added,  "  he'll  explain  that 
too." 

"  To-morrow?  " 

"  No — as  a  different  branch.     Say  day  after." 

"  Ah,  then,"  said  Maud,  "  if  he  explains !  " 

"  There's  no  hole?  I  don't  know!  " — and  it  forced 
from  him  at  last  a  sigh.  He  was  impatient  of  it,  for 
he  had  done  with  it;  it  would  soon  bore  him.  So  fast 
they  lived.  "  It  will  take,"  he  only  dropped,  "  much 
explaining." 

His  detachment  was  logical,  but  she  looked  a  mo 
ment  at  his  sudden  weariness.  "  There's  always,  re 
member,  Mrs.  Chorner." 

428 


THE   PAPERS 

"  Oh,  yes,  Mrs.  Chorner;  we  luckily  invented  her.9' 

"  Well,  if  she  drove  him  to  his  death ?  " 

Bight,  with  a  laugh,  caught  at  it.  "  Is  that  it?  Did 
she  drive  him?  " 

It  pulled  her  up,  and,  though  she  smiled,  they  stood 
again,  a  little,  as  on  their  guard.  "  Now,  at  any  rate,'' 
Maud  simply  said  at  last,  "  she'll  marry  him.  So  you 
see  how  right  I  was." 

With  a  preoccupation  that  had  grown  in  him, 
however,  he  had  already  lost  the  thread.  "  How 
right ?  " 

"  Not  to  sell  my  Talk." 

"  Oh  yes,"— he  remembered.  "  Quite  right."  But 
it  all  came  to  something  else.  "  Whom  will  you 
marry?  " 

She  only,  at  first,  for  answer,  kept  her  eyes  on  him. 
Then  she  turned  them  about  the  place  and  saw  no 
hindrance,  and  then,  further,  bending  with  a  tender 
ness  in  which  she  felt  so  transformed,  so  won  to  some 
thing  she  had  never  been  before,  that  she  might  even, 
to  other  eyes,  well  have  looked  so,  she  gravely  kissed 
him.  After  which,  as  he  took  her  arm,  they  walked  on 
together.  "  That,  at  least,"  she  said,  "  we'll  put  in  the 
Papers." 


THE  END 


RETURN  TO  T5ESK  FROM  WHI 


OWED 


CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

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JUN     71974  82 


APR  14 1901 


4UN. 


984 


LD  21-32m-3,'74 
(R7057slO)476 — A-32 


General  Library 
University  of  California 
Berkeley 


LD9-20m 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


67304-5 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


